What Kind Of Shareholders Own Buzzi Unicem S.p.A. (BIT:BZU)?

If you want to know who really controls Buzzi Unicem S.p.A. (BIT:BZU), 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. Companies that used to be publicly owned tend to have lower insider ownership.

Buzzi Unicem is a pretty big company. It has a market capitalization of €3.8b. Normally institutions would own a significant portion of a company this size. 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 Buzzi Unicem.

View our latest analysis for Buzzi Unicem

What Does The Institutional Ownership Tell Us About Buzzi Unicem?

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 Buzzi Unicem does have institutional investors; and they hold a good portion of the company's stock. This suggests some credibility amongst professional investors. But we can't rely on that fact alone since institutions make bad investments sometimes, just like everyone does. 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 Buzzi Unicem'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 Buzzi Unicem. Fimedi SpA is currently the company's largest shareholder with 48% of shares outstanding. For context, the second largest shareholder holds about 1.6% of the shares outstanding, followed by an ownership of 1.6% by the third-largest shareholder.

After doing some more digging, we found that the top 3 shareholders collectively control more than half of the company's shares, implying that they have considerable power to influence the company's decisions.

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 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 Buzzi Unicem

While the precise definition of an insider can be subjective, almost everyone considers board members to be insiders. 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.

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.

We note our data does not show any board members holding shares, personally. Given we are not picking up on insider ownership, we may have missing data. Therefore, it would be interesting to assess the CEO compensation and tenure, here.

General Public Ownership

The general public holds a 32% stake in Buzzi Unicem. This size of ownership, while considerable, may not be enough to change company policy if the decision is not in sync with other large shareholders.

Private Company Ownership

It seems that Private Companies own 48%, of the Buzzi Unicem stock. Private companies may be related parties. Sometimes insiders have an interest in a public company through a holding in a private company, rather than in their own capacity as an individual. While it's hard to draw any broad stroke conclusions, it is worth noting as an area for further research.

Next Steps:

It's always worth thinking about the different groups who own shares in a company. But to understand Buzzi Unicem better, we need to consider many other factors. Take risks for example - Buzzi Unicem has 1 warning sign 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. 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.
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