In This Article:
Key Insights
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Significantly high institutional ownership implies Smiths News' stock price is sensitive to their trading actions
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52% of the business is held by the top 5 shareholders
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Analyst forecasts along with ownership data serve to give a strong idea about prospects for a business
A look at the shareholders of Smiths News plc (LON:SNWS) can tell us which group is most powerful. The group holding the most number of shares in the company, around 79% to be precise, is institutions. In other words, the group stands to gain the most (or lose the most) from their investment into the company.
Since institutional have access to huge amounts of capital, their market moves tend to receive a lot of scrutiny by retail or individual investors. Therefore, a good portion of institutional money invested in the company is usually a huge vote of confidence on its future.
Let's delve deeper into each type of owner of Smiths News, beginning with the chart below.
See our latest analysis for Smiths News
What Does The Institutional Ownership Tell Us About Smiths News?
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.
We can see that Smiths News does have institutional investors; and they hold a good portion of the company's stock. This suggests some credibility amongst professional investors. But we can't rely on that fact alone since institutions make bad investments sometimes, just like everyone does. If multiple institutions change their view on a stock at the same time, you could see the share price drop fast. It's therefore worth looking at Smiths News' earnings history below. Of course, the future is what really matters.
Since institutional investors own more than half the issued stock, the board will likely have to pay attention to their preferences. We note that hedge funds don't have a meaningful investment in Smiths News. Our data shows that Aberforth Partners LLP is the largest shareholder with 18% of shares outstanding. In comparison, the second and third largest shareholders hold about 15% and 10% of the stock. In addition, we found that Jonathan Bunting, the CEO has 1.2% of the shares allocated to their name.
On looking further, we found that 52% of the shares are owned by the top 5 shareholders. In other words, these shareholders have a meaningful say in the decisions of the company.
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. There are plenty of analysts covering the stock, so it might be worth seeing what they are forecasting, too.