ASX:MLS Insider_trading Feb 28th 18
General Public Ownership
A big stake of 83.23% in MLS is held by the general public. With this size of ownership, retail investors can collectively play a role in major company policies that affect shareholders returns, including executive remuneration and the appointment of directors. They can also exercise the power to decline an acquisition or merger that may not improve profitability.
Private Company Ownership
Another group of owners that a potential investor in MLS should consider are private companies, with a stake of 7.24%. While they invest more often due to strategic interests, an investment can also be driven by capital gains through share price appreciation. This kind of ownership, if predominantly strategic, can give these companies a significant power to affect MLS’s business strategy. Thus, potential investors should look into these business relations and check how it can impact long-term shareholder returns.
Next Steps:
With a low level of institutional ownership, investors in MLS need not worry about non-fundamental factors such as ownership structure causing large impact on stock prices. However, ownership structure should not be the only focus of your research when constructing an investment thesis around MLS. Instead, you should be evaluating company-specific factors such as Metals Australia’s past track record and financial health. I urge you to complete your research by taking a look at the areas below. Just a heads up – to access some parts of the Simply Wall St research tool you might be asked to create a free account, but it takes just one click and the information they provide is definitely worth it in my opinion.
- 1. Financial Health: Is MLS’s operations financially sustainable? Balance sheets can be hard to analyze, which is why Simply Wall St does it for us. Check out important financial health checks here.
- 2. Past Track Record: Has MLS been consistently performing well irrespective of the ups and downs in the market? Go into more detail in the past performance analysis and take a look at the free visual representations of MLS’s historicals for more clarity.
- 3. Other High-Performing Stocks: Are there other stocks that provide better prospects with proven track records? Explore a free list of these great stocks here.
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 pass 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.