Private companies in SES-imagotag Société Anonyme (EPA:SESL) are its biggest bettors, and their bets paid off as stock gained 8.2% last week - Top World News Today (2024)

Key Insights

• The considerable ownership by private companies in SES-imagotag Société Anonyme indicates that they collectively have a greater say in management and business strategy
• The top 4 shareholders own 54% of the company
• Insiders own 13% of SES-imagotag Société Anonyme

To get a sense of who is truly in control of SES-imagotag Société Anonyme (EPA:SESL), it is important to understand the ownership structure of the business. With 32% stake, private companies possess the maximum shares in the company. Put another way, the group faces the maximum upside potential (or downside risk).

Clearly, private companies benefitted the most after the company’s market cap rose by €131m last week.

In the chart below, we zoom in on the different ownership groups of SES-imagotag Société Anonyme.

Check out our latest analysis for SES-imagotag Société Anonyme

What Does The Institutional Ownership Tell Us About SES-imagotag Société Anonyme?

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.

We can see that SES-imagotag Société Anonyme does have institutional investors; and they hold a good portion of the company’s stock. 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. It is not uncommon to see a big share price drop if two large institutional investors try to sell out of a stock at the same time. So it is worth checking the past earnings trajectory of SES-imagotag Société Anonyme, (below). Of course, keep in mind that there are other factors to consider, too.

Hedge funds don’t have many shares in SES-imagotag Société Anonyme. Beijing Electronics Holding Co.,Ltd is currently the company’s largest shareholder with 32% of shares outstanding. With 12% and 5.4% of the shares outstanding respectively, S. E. Sim and E Ink Holdings Inc. are the second and third largest shareholders. Furthermore, CEO Thierry Gadou is the owner of 1.4% of the company’s shares.

To make our study more interesting, we found that the top 4 shareholders control more than half of the company which implies that this group has considerable sway over the company’s decision-making.

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 plenty of analysts covering the stock, so it might be worth seeing what they are forecasting, too.

Insider Ownership Of SES-imagotag Société Anonyme

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.

Our information suggests that insiders maintain a significant holding in SES-imagotag Société Anonyme. It has a market capitalization of just €1.7b, and insiders have €229m worth of shares in their own names. That’s quite significant. Most would say this shows a good degree of alignment with shareholders, especially in a company of this size. You can click here to see if those insiders have been buying or selling.

General Public Ownership

With a 25% ownership, the general public, mostly comprising of individual investors, have some degree of sway over SES-imagotag Société Anonyme. 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

It seems that Private Companies own 32%, of the SES-imagotag Société Anonyme 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 7.4% of the SES-imagotag Société Anonyme shares on issue. It’s hard to say for sure but this suggests they have entwined business interests. This might be a strategic stake, so it’s worth watching this space for changes in ownership.

Next Steps:

It’s always worth thinking about the different groups who own shares in a company. But to understand SES-imagotag Société Anonyme better, we need to consider many other factors. To that end, you should learn about the 2 warning signs we’ve spotted with SES-imagotag Société Anonyme (including 1 which makes us a bit uncomfortable) .

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.