Aroundtown SA's (ETR:AT1) 12% loss last week hit both individual investors who own 33% as well as institutions

Key Insights

• Significant control over Aroundtown by individual investors implies that the general public has more power to influence management and governance-related decisions
• The top 6 shareholders own 52% of the company
• Institutions own 27% of Aroundtown

If you want to know who really controls Aroundtown SA (ETR:AT1), then you'll have to look at the makeup of its share registry. With 33% stake, individual investors possess the maximum shares in the company. That is, the group stands to benefit the most if the stock rises (or lose the most if there is a downturn).

While institutions who own 27% came under pressure after market cap dropped to €2.1b last week,individual investors took the most losses.

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

See our latest analysis for Aroundtown

What Does The Institutional Ownership Tell Us About Aroundtown?

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.

As you can see, institutional investors have a fair amount of stake in Aroundtown. 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. When multiple institutions own a stock, there's always a risk that they are in a 'crowded trade'. When such a trade goes wrong, multiple parties may compete to sell stock fast. This risk is higher in a company without a history of growth. You can see Aroundtown's historic earnings and revenue below, but keep in mind there's always more to the story.

Aroundtown is not owned by hedge funds. Looking at our data, we can see that the largest shareholder is TLG Immobilien AG with 17% of shares outstanding. Avisco Group PLC is the second largest shareholder owning 14% of common stock, and Vergepoint Limited holds about 7.4% of the company stock.

We did some more digging and found that 6 of the top shareholders account for roughly 52% of the register, implying that along with larger shareholders, there are a few smaller shareholders, thereby balancing out each others interests somewhat.

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 Aroundtown

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.

Insider ownership is positive when it signals leadership are thinking like the true owners of the company. However, high insider ownership can also give immense power to a small group within the company. This can be negative in some circumstances.

We note our data does not show any board members 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 33% ownership, the general public, mostly comprising of individual investors, have some degree of sway over Aroundtown. 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.

Private Company Ownership

It seems that Private Companies own 22%, of the Aroundtown stock. 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.

Public Company Ownership

Public companies currently own 17% of Aroundtown stock. We can't be certain but it is quite possible this is a strategic stake. The businesses may be similar, or work together.

Next Steps:

I find it very interesting to look at who exactly owns a company. But to truly gain insight, we need to consider other information, too. For example, we've discovered 2 warning signs for Aroundtown that you should be aware of before investing here.

Ultimately the future is most important. You can access this free report on analyst forecasts for the company.

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.