Could The Gold Road Resources Limited (ASX:GOR) Ownership Structure Tell Us Something Useful?

The big shareholder groups in Gold Road Resources Limited (ASX:GOR) have power over the company. Institutions will often hold stock in bigger companies, and we expect to see insiders owning a noticeable percentage of the smaller ones. We also tend to see lower insider ownership in companies that were previously publicly owned.

Gold Road Resources is a smaller company with a market capitalization of AU$526m, so it may still be flying under the radar of many institutional investors. In the chart below below, we can see that institutions own shares in the company. Let’s take a closer look to see what the different types of shareholder can tell us about GOR.

View our latest analysis for Gold Road Resources

ASX:GOR Ownership Summary December 18th 18
ASX:GOR Ownership Summary December 18th 18

What Does The Institutional Ownership Tell Us About Gold Road Resources?

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.

As you can see, institutional investors own 31% of Gold Road Resources. This can indicate that the company has a certain degree of credibility in the investment community. However, it is best to be wary of relying on the supposed validation that comes with institutional investors. They too, get it wrong sometimes. 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 Gold Road Resources, (below). Of course, keep in mind that there are other factors to consider, too.

ASX:GOR Income Statement Export December 18th 18
ASX:GOR Income Statement Export December 18th 18

Our data indicates that hedge funds own 9.3% of Gold Road Resources. That catches my attention because hedge funds sometimes try to influence management, or bring about changes that will create near term value for shareholders. There are plenty of analysts covering the stock, so it might be worth seeing what they are forecasting, too.

Insider Ownership Of Gold Road Resources

The definition of company insiders can be subjective, and does vary between jurisdictions. Our data reflects individual insiders, capturing board members at the very least. The company management answer to the board; and the latter should represent the interests of shareholders. Notably, sometimes top-level managers are on the board, themselves.

Most consider insider ownership a positive because it can indicate the board is well aligned with other shareholders. However, on some occasions too much power is concentrated within this group.

Shareholders would probably be interested to learn that insiders own shares in Gold Road Resources Limited. As individuals, the insiders collectively own AU$26m worth of the AU$526m company. This shows at least some alignment. You can click here to see if those insiders have been buying or selling.

General Public Ownership

With a 48% ownership, the general public have some degree of sway over GOR. 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

Our data indicates that Private Companies hold 3.1%, of the company’s shares. It’s hard to draw any conclusions from this fact alone, so its worth looking into who owns those private companies. Sometimes insiders or other related parties have an interest in shares in a public company through a separate private company.

Public Company Ownership

It appears to us that public companies own 3.3% of GOR. 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 Gold Road Resources 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 .

But ultimately it is the future, not the past, that will determine how well the owners of this business will do. Therefore we think it advisable to take a look at this free report showing whether analysts are predicting a brighter future.

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.