Yahoo Finance Can We See Significant Insider Ownership On The Vital Metals Limited (ASX:VML) Share Register?
A look at the shareholders of Vital Metals Limited (ASX:VML) can tell us which group is most powerful. Institutions often own shares in more established companies, while it’s not unusual to see insiders own a fair bit of smaller companies. 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.’
Vital Metals is not a large company by global standards. It has a market capitalization of AU$12m, which means it wouldn’t have the attention of many institutional investors. Our analysis of the ownership of the company, below, shows that institutions are not really that prevalent on the share registry. Let’s delve deeper into each type of owner, to discover more about VML.
View our latest analysis for Vital Metals
What Does The Institutional Ownership Tell Us About Vital Metals?
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.
Institutions own less than 5% of Vital Metals. That indicates that the company is on the radar of some funds, but it isn’t particularly popular with professional investors at the moment. If the company is growing earnings, that may indicate that it is just beginning to catch the attention of these deep-pocketed investors. When multiple institutional investors want to buy shares, we often see a rising share price. The past revenue trajectory (shown below) can be an indication of future growth, but there are no guarantees.
We note that hedge funds don’t have a meaningful investment in Vital Metals. Our information suggests that there isn’t any analyst coverage of the stock, so it is probably little known.
Insider Ownership Of Vital Metals
The definition of an insider can differ slightly between different countries, but members of the board of directors always count. Company management run the business, but the CEO will answer to the board, even if he or she is a member of it.
Insider ownership is positive when it signals leadership are thinking like the true owners of the company. However, high insider ownership can also give immense power to a small group within the company. This can be negative in some circumstances.
We can see that insiders own shares in Vital Metals Limited. As individuals, the insiders collectively own AU$1m worth of the AU$12m company. This shows at least some alignment, but I usually like to see larger insider holdings. You can click here to see if those insiders have been buying or selling.
General Public Ownership
The general public, who are mostly retail investors, collectively hold 74% of Vital Metals shares. This size of ownership gives retail investors collective power. They can and probably do influence decisions on executive compensation, dividend policies and proposed business acquisitions.
Private Company Ownership
It seems that Private Companies own 12%, of the VML 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 3.9%, of the VML 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:
It’s always worth thinking about the different groups who own shares in a company. But to understand Vital Metals better, we need to consider many other factors.
Many find it useful to take an in depth look at how a company has performed in the past. You can access this detailed graph of past earnings, revenue and cash flow .
Of course this may not be the best stock to buy. So take a peek at this free free list of interesting companies.
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.
To help readers see past the short term volatility of the financial market, we aim to bring you a long-term focused research analysis purely driven by fundamental data. Note that our analysis does not factor in the latest price-sensitive company announcements.
The author is an independent contributor and at the time of publication had no position in the stocks mentioned. For errors that warrant correction please contact the editor at editorial-team@simplywallst.com.
