The recent 27% gain must have brightened CEO Massimo Scagliarini's week, GVS S.p.A.'s (BIT:GVS) most bullish insider

Key Insights

• Insiders appear to have a vested interest in GVS' growth, as seen by their sizeable ownership
• 60% of the company is held by a single shareholder (Massimo Scagliarini)
• 29% of GVS is held by Institutions

To get a sense of who is truly in control of GVS S.p.A. (BIT:GVS), it is important to understand the ownership structure of the business. With 60% stake, individual insiders 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).

As a result, insiders were the biggest beneficiaries of last week’s 27% gain.

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

Check out our latest analysis for GVS

What Does The Institutional Ownership Tell Us About GVS?

Institutional investors commonly compare their own returns to the returns of a commonly followed index. So they generally do consider buying larger companies that are included in the relevant benchmark index.

As you can see, institutional investors have a fair amount of stake in GVS. 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 GVS' earnings history below. Of course, the future is what really matters.

We note that hedge funds don't have a meaningful investment in GVS. With a 60% stake, CEO Massimo Scagliarini is the largest shareholder. With such a huge stake, we infer that they have significant control of the future of the company. It's usually considered a good sign when insiders own a significant number of shares in the company, and in this case, we're glad to see a company insider with such skin in the game. In comparison, the second and third largest shareholders hold about 5.7% and 3.1% of the 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. There are a reasonable number of analysts covering the stock, so it might be useful to find out their aggregate view on the future.

Insider Ownership Of GVS

While the precise definition of an insider can be subjective, almost everyone considers board members to be insiders. Company management run the business, but the CEO will answer to the board, even if he or she is a member of it.

Most consider insider ownership a positive because it can indicate the board is well aligned with other shareholders. However, on some occasions too much power is concentrated within this group.

It seems that insiders own more than half the GVS S.p.A. stock. This gives them a lot of power. Insiders own €725m worth of shares in the €1.2b company. That's extraordinary! Most would argue this is a positive, showing strong alignment with shareholders. You can click here to see if they have been selling down their stake.

General Public Ownership

With a 11% ownership, the general public, mostly comprising of individual investors, have some degree of sway over GVS. 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:

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. Take risks for example - GVS has 2 warning signs we think you should be aware of.

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.