Key Insights

• The considerable ownership by retail investors in Chengdu Olymvax Biopharmaceuticals indicates that they collectively have a greater say in management and business strategy
• A total of 10 investors have a majority stake in the company with 51% ownership
• Insider ownership in Chengdu Olymvax Biopharmaceuticals is 26%

If you want to know who really controls Chengdu Olymvax Biopharmaceuticals Inc. (SHSE:688319), then you'll have to look at the makeup of its share registry. With 42% stake, retail investors possess the maximum shares in the company. In other words, the group stands to gain the most (or lose the most) from their investment into the company.

While retail investors were the group that benefitted the most from last week's CN¥378m market cap gain, insiders too had a 26% share in those profits.

In the chart below, we zoom in on the different ownership groups of Chengdu Olymvax Biopharmaceuticals.

What Does The Institutional Ownership Tell Us About Chengdu Olymvax Biopharmaceuticals?

Many institutions measure their performance against an index that approximates the local market. So they usually pay more attention to companies that are included in major indices.

Chengdu Olymvax Biopharmaceuticals already has institutions on the share registry. Indeed, they own a respectable stake in the company. 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. When multiple institutions own a stock, there's always a risk that they are in a 'crowded trade'. When such a trade goes wrong, multiple parties may compete to sell stock fast. This risk is higher in a company without a history of growth. You can see Chengdu Olymvax Biopharmaceuticals' historic earnings and revenue below, but keep in mind there's always more to the story.

We note that hedge funds don't have a meaningful investment in Chengdu Olymvax Biopharmaceuticals. Our data shows that Chongqing Wushan Biotechnology Co., Ltd. is the largest shareholder with 18% of shares outstanding. With 7.5% and 6.4% of the shares outstanding respectively, Fan Fan and Pengfei Zhang are the second and third largest shareholders. Pengfei Zhang, who is the third-largest shareholder, also happens to hold the title of Chairman of Corporate Board. In addition, we found that Shaowen Fan, the CEO has 3.9% of the shares allocated to their name.

We also observed that the top 10 shareholders account for more than half of the share register, with a few smaller shareholders to balance the interests of the larger ones to a certain extent.

Researching institutional ownership is a good way to gauge and filter a stock's expected performance. The same can be achieved by studying analyst sentiments. Quite a few analysts cover the stock, so you could look into forecast growth quite easily.

Insider Ownership Of Chengdu Olymvax Biopharmaceuticals

While the precise definition of an insider can be subjective, almost everyone considers board members to be insiders. 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.

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.

It seems insiders own a significant proportion of Chengdu Olymvax Biopharmaceuticals Inc.. Insiders have a CN¥1.0b stake in this CN¥3.9b business. We would say this shows alignment with shareholders, but it is worth noting that the company is still quite small; some insiders may have founded the business. You can click here to see if those insiders have been buying or selling.

General Public Ownership

The general public-- including retail investors -- own 42% stake in the company, and hence can't easily be ignored. 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 21%, of the Chengdu Olymvax Biopharmaceuticals stock. 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.

Next Steps:

I find it very interesting to look at who exactly owns a company. But to truly gain insight, we need to consider other information, too.

I like to dive deeper into how a company has performed in the past. You can find historic revenue and earnings in this detailed graph.

If you would prefer discover what analysts are predicting in terms of future growth, do not miss this free report on analyst forecasts.

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.