ALSO Holding AG's (VTX:ALSN) largest shareholders are private companies who were rewarded as market cap surged CHF196m last week

Key Insights

• ALSO Holding's significant private companies ownership suggests that the key decisions are influenced by shareholders from the larger public
• Droege Group AG owns 54% of the company
• 21% of ALSO Holding is held by Institutions

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If you want to know who really controls ALSO Holding AG (VTX:ALSN), then you'll have to look at the makeup of its share registry. The group holding the most number of shares in the company, around 58% to be precise, is private companies. In other words, the group stands to gain the most (or lose the most) from their investment into the company.

Clearly, private companies benefitted the most after the company's market cap rose by CHF196m last week.

Let's delve deeper into each type of owner of ALSO Holding, beginning with the chart below.

See our latest analysis for ALSO Holding

What Does The Institutional Ownership Tell Us About ALSO Holding?

Many institutions measure their performance against an index that approximates the local market. So they usually pay more attention to companies that are included in major indices.

We can see that ALSO Holding does have institutional investors; and they hold a good portion of the company's stock. This implies the analysts working for those institutions have looked at the stock and they like it. But just like anyone else, they could be wrong. If multiple institutions change their view on a stock at the same time, you could see the share price drop fast. It's therefore worth looking at ALSO Holding's earnings history below. Of course, the future is what really matters.

Hedge funds don't have many shares in ALSO Holding. The company's largest shareholder is Droege Group AG, with ownership of 54%. With such a huge stake in the ownership, we infer that they have significant control of the future of the company. UBS Asset Management AG is the second largest shareholder owning 4.1% of common stock, and Jh Topco Limited holds about 3.9% of the company stock.

While studying institutional ownership for a company can add value to your research, it is also a good practice to research analyst recommendations to get a deeper understand of a stock's expected performance. Quite a few analysts cover the stock, so you could look into forecast growth quite easily.

Insider Ownership Of ALSO Holding

While the precise definition of an insider can be subjective, almost everyone considers board members to be insiders. The company management answer to the board and the latter should represent the interests of shareholders. Notably, sometimes top-level managers are on the board themselves.

I generally consider insider ownership to be a good thing. However, on some occasions it makes it more difficult for other shareholders to hold the board accountable for decisions.

Our data cannot confirm that board members are holding shares personally. It is unusual not to have at least some personal holdings by board members, so our data might be flawed. A good next step would be to check how much the CEO is paid.

General Public Ownership

With a 21% ownership, the general public, mostly comprising of individual investors, have some degree of sway over ALSO Holding. While this group can't necessarily call the shots, it can certainly have a real influence on how the company is run.

Private Company Ownership

We can see that Private Companies own 58%, of the shares on issue. It might be worth looking deeper into this. If related parties, such as insiders, have an interest in one of these private companies, that should be disclosed in the annual report. Private companies may also have a strategic interest in the company.

Next Steps:

It's always worth thinking about the different groups who own shares in a company. But to understand ALSO Holding better, we need to consider many other factors.

Many find it useful to take an in depth look at how a company has performed in the past. You can access this detailed graph of past earnings, revenue and cash flow.

But ultimately it is the future, not the past, that will determine how well the owners of this business will do. Therefore we think it advisable to take a look at this free report showing whether analysts are predicting a brighter future.

NB: Figures in this article are calculated using data from the last twelve months, which refer to the 12-month period ending on the last date of the month the financial statement is dated. This may not be consistent with full year annual report figures.

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This article by Simply Wall St is general in nature. We provide commentary based on historical data and analyst forecasts only using an unbiased methodology and our articles are not intended to be financial advice. It does not constitute a recommendation to buy or sell any stock, and does not take account of your objectives, or your financial situation. We aim to bring you long-term focused analysis driven by fundamental data. Note that our analysis may not factor in the latest price-sensitive company announcements or qualitative material. Simply Wall St has no position in any stocks mentioned.