A look at the shareholders of Intrusion Inc. (NASDAQ:INTZ) can tell us which group is most powerful. And the group that holds the biggest piece of the pie are individual investors with 31% ownership. Put another way, the group faces the maximum upside potential (or downside risk).

While individual investors were the group that benefitted the most from last week’s US$24m market cap gain, insiders too had a 25% share in those profits.

In the chart below, we zoom in on the different ownership groups of Intrusion.

Check out our latest analysis for Intrusion

What Does The Institutional Ownership Tell Us About Intrusion?

Institutions typically measure themselves against a benchmark when reporting to their own investors, so they often become more enthusiastic about a stock once it's included in a major index. We would expect most companies to have some institutions on the register, especially if they are growing.

Intrusion 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. 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 Intrusion, (below). Of course, keep in mind that there are other factors to consider, too.

We note that hedge funds don't have a meaningful investment in Intrusion. The company's largest shareholder is Estate Of G. Ward Paxton, with ownership of 10%. Michael Paxton is the second largest shareholder owning 7.8% of common stock, and T. Head holds about 5.1% of the company stock.

After doing some more digging, we found that the top 11 have the combined ownership of 52% in the company, suggesting that no single shareholder has significant control over the company.

While it makes sense to study institutional ownership data for a company, it also makes sense to study analyst sentiments to know which way the wind is blowing. Quite a few analysts cover the stock, so you could look into forecast growth quite easily.

Insider Ownership Of Intrusion

While the precise definition of an insider can be subjective, almost everyone considers board members to be insiders. Management ultimately answers to the board. However, it is not uncommon for managers to be executive board members, especially if they are a founder or the CEO.

I generally consider insider ownership to be a good thing. However, on some occasions it makes it more difficult for other shareholders to hold the board accountable for decisions.