SGL Carbon SE's (ETR:SGL) recent 16% pullback adds to one-year year losses, institutional owners may take drastic measures

Key Insights

• Significantly high institutional ownership implies SGL Carbon's stock price is sensitive to their trading actions
• A total of 3 investors have a majority stake in the company with 54% ownership
• Analyst forecasts along with ownership data serve to give a strong idea about prospects for a business

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To get a sense of who is truly in control of SGL Carbon SE (ETR:SGL), it is important to understand the ownership structure of the business. With 45% stake, institutions possess the maximum shares in the company. In other words, the group stands to gain the most (or lose the most) from their investment into the company.

And institutional investors endured the highest losses after the company's share price fell by 16% last week. The recent loss, which adds to a one-year loss of 57% for stockholders, may not sit well with this group of investors. Institutions or "liquidity providers" control large sums of money and therefore, these types of investors usually have a lot of influence over stock price movements. As a result, if the decline continues, institutional investors may be pressured to sell SGL Carbon which might hurt individual investors.

Let's take a closer look to see what the different types of shareholders can tell us about SGL Carbon.

See our latest analysis for SGL Carbon

What Does The Institutional Ownership Tell Us About SGL Carbon?

Institutions typically measure themselves against a benchmark when reporting to their own investors, so they often become more enthusiastic about a stock once it's included in a major index. We would expect most companies to have some institutions on the register, especially if they are growing.

We can see that SGL Carbon 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 SGL Carbon's earnings history below. Of course, the future is what really matters.

SGL Carbon is not owned by hedge funds. Looking at our data, we can see that the largest shareholder is SKion GmbH with 28% of shares outstanding. For context, the second largest shareholder holds about 18% of the shares outstanding, followed by an ownership of 7.4% by the third-largest shareholder.

To make our study more interesting, we found that the top 3 shareholders have a majority ownership in the company, meaning that they are powerful enough to influence the decisions of the company.

Researching institutional ownership is a good way to gauge and filter a stock's expected performance. The same can be achieved by studying analyst sentiments. Quite a few analysts cover the stock, so you could look into forecast growth quite easily.

Insider Ownership Of SGL Carbon

The definition of company insiders can be subjective and does vary between jurisdictions. Our data reflects individual insiders, capturing board members at the very least. 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 information suggests that SGL Carbon SE insiders own under 1% of the company. It has a market capitalization of just €381m, and the board has only €1.1m worth of shares in their own names. Many investors in smaller companies prefer to see the board more heavily invested. You can click here to see if those insiders have been buying or selling.

General Public Ownership

With a 29% ownership, the general public, mostly comprising of individual investors, have some degree of sway over SGL Carbon. While this size of ownership may not be enough to sway a policy decision in their favour, they can still make a collective impact on company policies.

Public Company Ownership

We can see that public companies hold 26% of the SGL Carbon shares on issue. It's hard to say for sure but this suggests they have entwined business interests. This might be a strategic stake, so it's worth watching this space for changes in ownership.

Next Steps:

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

I like to dive deeper into how a company has performed in the past. You can access this interactive graph of past earnings, revenue and cash flow, for free .

If you would prefer discover what analysts are predicting in terms of future growth, do not miss this free report on analyst forecasts .

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.