Post by
Fullplate on Jul 21, 2017 7:37pm
The Small Shareholders
I was asking the questions regarding the larger shareholders to get a feel for how many of us smaller shareholders there were. Let's presume that of the 34% of shares not owned by the large institutions, at most half of those shares are individually owned (other half of the 34 % owned by management and smaller institutional owners). That would be 17% of 110 million shares, or just under 19 million shares. Those individuals probably vary considerably in how much they own, but I would assume that nearly all would own from 1000 shares to 200,000 shares. A few would own less (probably a lot of those caught in the debt restructuring who didn't get out or buy more subsequently). And there might be a handful owning more than 200,000 shares. If my assumptions are in the ballpark, it means that there are only about 500 individual small shareholders, and perhaps even fewer. If 500 individuals owned a weighred average of 38,000 shares (US$22,000), that would cover 17% of Banro shares. (Interestingly, the larger shareholders probably number fewer than 100.)
From looking at at past posts on this Stockhouse board, we seem to top out at around 150 individual reads. Some of those reads are probably from management and institutions, and quite a few are non-shareholder investors who have been smart enough or too chicken to pick up the cheap shares. I would assume that at least a third of the reads are from the small shareholders. If so, we are probably reaching at least 10% of the small shareholders and probably weighted higher on the collective share count. I know that I have made a lot of assumptions that may not be entirely accurate, but my conclusion is probably pretty close. Those of us reading this board who are smaller shareholders probably own 2-3 million shares, but represent a much larger percentage of the shareholder numbers.
It is my opinion that the smaller shareholders are important to Banro (essentially meaning Gramercy and Baiyiln), and that this message board is an important vehicle to communicate among shareholders and to management. If the small shareholders weren't important, I think that they would have been totally wiped out in the debt restructuring. Looking several months down the road, I am hoping that these recent forward gold sales are not setting up another unfavorable restructuring for us. We will need to keep a dialogue going here to share info and opinions during these months where management will likely be silent on production numbers. It would be great to see more readers check in with posts, if for no other reason than to better gauge shareholder numbers on this board. And I would be happy to refine my calculations here if you have numbers to share.