An interesting aspect to inspect when assessing a company is its share ownership breakdown. Today, we're taking a look at the ownership breakdown for Sydney Airport (ASX: SYD) shares.
This is quite topical given the acquisition proposals that the airport operator has received so far this year. In any acquisition scenario, shareholder approval is needed to progress and accept a takeover bid. This means understanding who owns shares in a company can be important.
At the time of writing, shares in Sydney Airport are residing at $8.27 apiece, up about 29% year-to-date.
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Who owns Sydney Airport shares?
It may not come as a surprise that the company which owns and operates one of Australia's most critical pieces of infrastructure is popular among retail investors. People like you and I make up the majority of shareholders in the $22.3 billion airport — owning approximately 63.5% of shares on issue.
Furthermore, a commonly sought-after trait in companies is high insider ownership between the founders and/or management team. However, Sydney Airport counts only 0.04% of its shares as held by individual insiders. Presently, the largest insider shareholder on the registry is chief executive officer Geoffrey Culbert with $1.8 million worth of Sydney Airport shares.
Meanwhile, the remaining 36.4% of shares are spread across many different institutions. These investors are comprised of mutual and super funds, insurance companies, investment firms, etc. Essentially, these are funds that are pooled together and managed by a third party.
In the case of Sydney Airport, some notable institutional shareholders include UniSuper (15.28%), The Vanguard Group (2.93%), Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec (2.17%), and Blackrock (2.03%).
Because of the depth of research applied by institutional investors, their decisions to buy or sell can have a large influence on the broader market's perception. This is demonstrated by the last time a large institutional transaction occurred in Sydney Airport shares. On 3 December 2020, UniSuper sold more than $66 million worth of shares. What followed was a 17% share price decline over the next 11 weeks.
What's the latest?
After knocking back multiple offers, the board of Sydney Airport has finally allowed the consortium of infrastructure investors to conduct due diligence on a non-exclusive basis.
To get access to the books, the consortium had to make an offer of $8.75 per share. An outcome from due diligence is expected any day now, as we near 4 weeks since the process commenced.
