Retail investors among Italmobiliare S.p.A.'s (BIT:ITM) largest shareholders, saw gain in holdings value after stock jumped 5.4% last week

Key Insights

• The considerable ownership by retail investors in Italmobiliare indicates that they collectively have a greater say in management and business strategy
• The top 3 shareholders own 51% of the company
• 18% of Italmobiliare is held by Institutions

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If you want to know who really controls Italmobiliare S.p.A. (BIT:ITM), 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 37% to be precise, is retail investors. In other words, the group stands to gain the most (or lose the most) from their investment into the company.

Clearly, retail investors benefitted the most after the company's market cap rose by €63m last week.

In the chart below, we zoom in on the different ownership groups of Italmobiliare.

View our latest analysis for Italmobiliare

What Does The Institutional Ownership Tell Us About Italmobiliare?

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.

Italmobiliare 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 Italmobiliare's historic earnings and revenue below, but keep in mind there's always more to the story.

We note that hedge funds don't have a meaningful investment in Italmobiliare. Looking at our data, we can see that the largest shareholder is Efiparind BV with 33% of shares outstanding. In comparison, the second and third largest shareholders hold about 11% and 6.8% of the stock. Furthermore, CEO Carlo Pesenti is the owner of 1.1% of the company's shares.

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.

While it makes sense to study institutional ownership data for a company, it also makes sense to study analyst sentiments to know which way the wind is blowing. Quite a few analysts cover the stock, so you could look into forecast growth quite easily.

Insider Ownership Of Italmobiliare

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.

We can see that insiders own shares in Italmobiliare S.p.A.. The insiders have a meaningful stake worth €13m. Most would see this as a real positive. It is good to see this level of investment by insiders. You can check here to see if those insiders have been buying recently.

General Public Ownership

With a 37% ownership, the general public, mostly comprising of individual investors, have some degree of sway over Italmobiliare. 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 33%, of the Italmobiliare stock. It might be worth looking deeper into this. If related parties, such as insiders, have an interest in one of these private companies, that should be disclosed in the annual report. Private companies may also have a strategic interest in the company.

Public Company Ownership

We can see that public companies hold 11% of the Italmobiliare 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:

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. Be aware that Italmobiliare is showing 2 warning signs in our investment analysis , and 1 of those is a bit concerning...

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.