What Type Of Shareholders Make Up CM.com N.V.'s (AMS:CMCOM) Share Registry?

The big shareholder groups in CM.com N.V. (AMS:CMCOM) have power over the company. Generally speaking, as a company grows, institutions will increase their ownership. Conversely, insiders often decrease their ownership over time. I generally like to see some degree of insider ownership, even if only a little. As Nassim Nicholas Taleb said, 'Don’t tell me what you think, tell me what you have in your portfolio.

CM.com isn't enormous, but it's not particularly small either. It has a market capitalization of €862m, which means it would generally expect to see some institutions on the share registry. Our analysis of the ownership of the company, below, shows that institutional investors have bought into the company. We can zoom in on the different ownership groups, to learn more about CM.com.

View our latest analysis for CM.com

What Does The Institutional Ownership Tell Us About CM.com?

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.

CM.com already has institutions on the share registry. Indeed, they own a respectable stake in the company. 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. 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 CM.com's historic earnings and revenue below, but keep in mind there's always more to the story.

CM.com is not owned by hedge funds. Because actions speak louder than words, we consider it a good sign when insiders own a significant stake in a company. In CM.com's case, its Top Key Executive, Gilbert Franciscus Adrianus Gooijers, is the largest shareholder, holding 27% of shares outstanding. Meanwhile, the second and third largest shareholders, hold 27% and 5.2%, of the shares outstanding, respectively. Interestingly, the second-largest shareholder, Jeroen van Glabbeek is also Chief Executive Officer, again, pointing towards strong insider ownership amongst the company's top shareholders.

After doing some more digging, we found that the top 2 shareholders collectively control more than half of the company's shares, implying that they have considerable power to influence the company's decisions.

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 is some analyst coverage of the stock, but it could still become more well known, with time.

Insider Ownership Of CM.com

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.

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.

It seems that insiders own more than half the CM.com N.V. stock. This gives them a lot of power. Given it has a market cap of €862m, that means insiders have a whopping €460m worth of shares in their own names. 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 28% ownership, the general public have some degree of sway over CM.com. 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

We can see that Private Companies own 8.6%, of the shares on issue. It's hard to draw any conclusions from this fact alone, so its worth looking into who owns those private companies. Sometimes insiders or other related parties have an interest in shares in a public company through a separate private company.

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. To that end, you should be aware of the 1 warning sign we've spotted with CM.com .

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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