What Kind Of Investor Owns Most Of Electricité de France S.A. (EPA:EDF)?

If you want to know who really controls Electricité de France S.A. (EPA:EDF), then you'll have to look at the makeup of its share registry. Generally speaking, as a company grows, institutions will increase their ownership. Conversely, insiders often decrease their ownership over time. We also tend to see lower insider ownership in companies that were previously publicly owned.

Electricité de France has a market capitalization of €35b, so it's too big to fly under the radar. We'd expect to see both institutions and retail investors owning a portion of the company. In the chart below, we can see that institutional investors have bought into the company. Let's delve deeper into each type of owner, to discover more about Electricité de France.

See our latest analysis for Electricité de France

What Does The Institutional Ownership Tell Us About Electricité de France?

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 Electricité de France does have institutional investors; and they hold 17% of the 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. 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 Electricité de France's historic earnings and revenue, below, but keep in mind there's always more to the story.

Hedge funds don't have many shares in Electricité de France. Our data shows that France is the largest shareholder with 71% of shares outstanding. With such a huge stake in the ownership, we infer that they have significant control of the future of the company. With 13% and 1.0% of the shares outstanding respectively, EPIC Bpifrance, Asset Management Arm and Thornburg Investment Management, Inc. are the second and third largest shareholders.

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. There are plenty of analysts covering the stock, so it might be worth seeing what they are forecasting, too.

Insider Ownership Of Electricité de France

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. Management ultimately answers to the board. However, it is not uncommon for managers to be executive board members, especially if they are a founder or the CEO.

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 suggests that insiders own under 1% of Electricité de France S.A. in their own names. As it is a large company, we'd only expect insiders to own a small percentage of it. But it's worth noting that they own €30k worth of shares. It is good to see board members owning shares, but it might be worth checking if those insiders have been buying.

General Public Ownership

The general public, with a 11% stake in the company, will not easily be ignored. 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.

Next Steps:

It's always worth thinking about the different groups who own shares in a company. But to understand Electricité de France better, we need to consider many other factors. Be aware that Electricité de France is showing 2 warning signs in our investment analysis , you should know about...

If you are like me, you may want to think about whether this company will grow or shrink. Luckily, you can check this free report showing analyst forecasts for its 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.

If you spot an error that warrants correction, please contact the editor at editorial-team@simplywallst.com. This article by Simply Wall St is general in nature. It does not constitute a recommendation to buy or sell any stock, and does not take account of your objectives, or your financial situation. Simply Wall St has no position in the stocks mentioned.

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