Insider Ownership
I find insiders are another important group of stakeholders, who are directly involved in making key decisions related to the use of capital. In essence, insider ownership is more about the alignment of shareholders’ interests with the management. 8.30% ownership makes insiders an important shareholder group. This level of ownership indicates closely aligned interests of shareholders and management. However, it would be interesting to take a look at their buying and selling activities lately. Buying may be sign of upbeat future expectations, but selling doesn’t necessarily mean the opposite as the insiders may be motivated by financial needs or they are simply diversifying their risk.
General Public Ownership
A big stake of 77.18% in CXO 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 important group of owners for potential investors in CXO are private companies that hold a stake of 5.89% in CXO. These are companies that are mainly invested due to their strategic interests or are incentivized by reaping capital gains on investments their shareholdings. This kind of ownership, if predominantly strategic, can give these companies a significant power to affect CXO’s business strategy. Thus, potential investors should look into these business relations and check how it can impact long-term shareholder returns.
Next Steps:
A relatively significant holding of company insiders could mean high alignment with shareholders. But at the same time, investors should be aware of the level of influence executives could have on governance decisions. However, if you are building an investment case for CXO, ownership structure alone should not dictate your decision to buy or sell the stock. Rather, you should be examining fundamental factors such as Core Exploration’s past track record and financial health. I urge you to complete your research by taking a look at the following:
- 1. Financial Health: Is CXO’s operations financially sustainable? Balance sheets can be hard to analyze, which is why we’ve done it for you. Check out our financial health checks here.
- 2. Past Track Record: Has CXO 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 CXO’s historicals for more clarity.
- 3. Other High-Performing Stocks: Are there other stocks that provide better prospects with proven track records? Explore our 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.