The big shareholder groups in PUMA SE (FRA:PUM) have power over the company. Large companies usually have institutions as shareholders, and we usually see insiders owning shares in smaller companies. Companies that used to be publicly owned tend to have lower insider ownership.

With a market capitalization of US$6.7b, PUMA is rather large. We’d expect to see institutional investors on the register. Companies of this size are usually well known to retail investors, too. Taking a look at the our data on the ownership groups (below), it’s seems that institutions own shares in the company. We can zoom in on the different ownership groups, to learn more about PUM.

View our latest analysis for PUMA

What Does The Institutional Ownership Tell Us About PUMA?

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.

As you can see, institutional investors own 22% of PUMA. 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. When multiple institutions own a stock, there’s always a risk that they are in a ‘crowded trade’. When such a trade goes wrong, multiple parties may compete to sell stock fast. This risk is higher in a company without a history of growth. You can see PUMA’s historic earnings and revenue, below, but keep in mind there’s always more to the story.

We note that hedge funds don’t have a meaningful investment in PUMA. Quite a few analysts cover the stock, so you could look into forecast growth quite easily.

Insider Ownership Of PUMA

While the precise definition of an insider can be subjective, almost everyone considers board members to be insiders. The company management answer to the board; and the latter should represent the interests of shareholders. Notably, sometimes top-level managers are on the board, themselves.

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.

Our data suggests that insiders own under 1% of PUMA SE in their own names. But they may have an indirect interest through a corporate structure that we haven’t picked up on. Keep in mind that it’s a big company, and the insiders own US$1.4m worth of shares. The absolute value might be more important than the proportional share. It is always good to see at least some insider ownership, but it might be worth checking if those insiders have been selling.