In This Article:
Key Insights
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Significant control over Computershare by individual investors implies that the general public has more power to influence management and governance-related decisions
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47% of the business is held by the top 25 shareholders
To get a sense of who is truly in control of Computershare Limited (ASX:CPU), it is important to understand the ownership structure of the business. We can see that individual investors own the lion's share in the company with 48% ownership. In other words, the group stands to gain the most (or lose the most) from their investment into the company.
And institutions on the other hand have a 48% ownership in the company. Insiders often own a large chunk of younger, smaller, companies while huge companies tend to have institutions as shareholders.
In the chart below, we zoom in on the different ownership groups of Computershare.
View our latest analysis for Computershare
What Does The Institutional Ownership Tell Us About Computershare?
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 have a fair amount of stake in Computershare. 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. 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 Computershare, (below). Of course, keep in mind that there are other factors to consider, too.
Hedge funds don't have many shares in Computershare. Australian Super Pty Ltd is currently the company's largest shareholder with 11% of shares outstanding. Meanwhile, the second and third largest shareholders, hold 6.3% and 6.1%, of the shares outstanding, respectively.
A deeper look at our ownership data shows that the top 25 shareholders collectively hold less than half of the register, suggesting a large group of small holders where no single shareholder has a majority.
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 a reasonable number of analysts covering the stock, so it might be useful to find out their aggregate view on the future.