How Many SmarTone Telecommunications Holdings Limited (HKG:315) Shares Do Institutions Own?

If you want to know who really controls SmarTone Telecommunications Holdings Limited (HKG:315), then you'll have to look at the makeup of its share registry. Large companies usually have institutions as shareholders, and we usually see insiders owning shares in smaller companies. Companies that used to be publicly owned tend to have lower insider ownership.

SmarTone Telecommunications Holdings is not a large company by global standards. It has a market capitalization of HK$4.8b, which means it wouldn't have the attention of many institutional investors. 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 SmarTone Telecommunications Holdings.

Check out our latest analysis for SmarTone Telecommunications Holdings

What Does The Institutional Ownership Tell Us About SmarTone Telecommunications Holdings?

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 SmarTone Telecommunications Holdings does have institutional investors; and they hold a good portion of the company's stock. This can indicate that the company has a certain degree of credibility in the investment community. However, it is best to be wary of relying on the supposed validation that comes with institutional investors. They too, get it wrong sometimes. It is not uncommon to see a big share price drop if two large institutional investors try to sell out of a stock at the same time. So it is worth checking the past earnings trajectory of SmarTone Telecommunications Holdings, (below). Of course, keep in mind that there are other factors to consider, too.

Hedge funds don't have many shares in SmarTone Telecommunications Holdings. Looking at our data, we can see that the largest shareholder is Sun Hung Kai Properties Limited with 72% of shares outstanding. This implies that they have majority interest control of the future of the company. For context, the second largest shareholder holds about 1.1% of the shares outstanding, followed by an ownership of 0.9% by the third-largest shareholder.

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 SmarTone Telecommunications Holdings

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.

Our most recent data indicates that insiders own less than 1% of SmarTone Telecommunications Holdings Limited. It seems the board members have no more than HK$25m worth of shares in the HK$4.8b company. I generally like to see a board more invested. However it might be worth checking if those insiders have been buying.

General Public Ownership

With a 21% ownership, the general public have some degree of sway over SmarTone Telecommunications Holdings. While this group can't necessarily call the shots, it can certainly have a real influence on how the company is run.

Public Company Ownership

We can see that public companies hold 72% of the SmarTone Telecommunications Holdings shares on issue. This may be a strategic interest and the two companies may have related business interests. It could be that they have de-merged. This holding is probably worth investigating further.

Next Steps:

It's always worth thinking about the different groups who own shares in a company. But to understand SmarTone Telecommunications Holdings better, we need to consider many other factors. To that end, you should be aware of the 1 warning sign we've spotted with SmarTone Telecommunications Holdings .

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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