Following recent decline, MAAS Group Holdings Limited's (ASX:MGH) top shareholder CEO Wesley Maas sees holdings value drop by 7.1%
Key Insights
- MAAS Group Holdings' significant insider ownership suggests inherent interests in company's expansion
- The top 3 shareholders own 55% of the company
- 14% of MAAS Group Holdings is held by Institutions
If you want to know who really controls MAAS Group Holdings Limited (ASX:MGH), then you'll have to look at the makeup of its share registry. The group holding the most number of shares in the company, around 53% to be precise, is individual insiders. In other words, the group stands to gain the most (or lose the most) from their investment into the company.
As market cap fell to AU$1.6b last week, insiders would have faced the highest losses than any other shareholder groups of the company.
In the chart below, we zoom in on the different ownership groups of MAAS Group Holdings.
View our latest analysis for MAAS Group Holdings
What Does The Institutional Ownership Tell Us About MAAS Group 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.
MAAS Group Holdings already has institutions on the share registry. Indeed, they own a respectable stake in the company. 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 MAAS Group Holdings' historic earnings and revenue below, but keep in mind there's always more to the story.
Hedge funds don't have many shares in MAAS Group Holdings. With a 42% stake, CEO Wesley Maas is the largest shareholder. For context, the second largest shareholder holds about 7.3% of the shares outstanding, followed by an ownership of 5.2% 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. Quite a few analysts cover the stock, so you could look into forecast growth quite easily.
Insider Ownership Of MAAS Group 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.
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 most recent data indicates that insiders own the majority of MAAS Group Holdings Limited. This means they can collectively make decisions for the company. That means insiders have a very meaningful AU$857m stake in this AU$1.6b business. It is good to see this level of investment. You can check here to see if those insiders have been selling any of their shares.
General Public Ownership
The general public-- including retail investors -- own 27% stake in the company, and hence can't easily be ignored. While this group can't necessarily call the shots, it can certainly have a real influence on how the company is run.
Private Company Ownership
We can see that Private Companies own 5.4%, 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:
It's always worth thinking about the different groups who own shares in a company. But to understand MAAS Group Holdings better, we need to consider many other factors. For example, we've discovered 2 warning signs for MAAS Group Holdings (1 shouldn't be ignored!) that you should be aware of before investing here.
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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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.