If you want to know who really controls Barrack St Investments Limited (ASX:BST), then you’ll have to look at the makeup of its share registry. Institutions will often hold stock in bigger companies, and we expect to see insiders owning a noticeable percentage of the smaller ones. I generally like to see some degree of insider ownership, even if only a little. As Nassim Nicholas Taleb said, ‘Don’t tell me what you think, tell me what you have in your portfolio.’
With a market capitalization of AU$18m, Barrack St Investments is a small cap stock, so it might not be well known by many institutional investors. In the chart below below, we can see that institutions don’t own shares in the company. Let’s delve deeper into each type of owner, to discover more about BST.
View our latest analysis for Barrack St Investments
What Does The Lack Of Institutional Ownership Tell Us About Barrack St Investments?
Small companies that are not very actively traded often lack institutional investors, but it’s less common to see large companies without them.
There are many reasons why a company might not have any institutions on the share registry. It may be hard for institutions to buy large amounts of shares, if liquidity (the amount of shares traded each day) is low. If the company has not needed to raise capital, institutions might lack the opportunity to build a position. It is also possible that fund managers don’t own the stock because they aren’t convinced it will perform well. Institutional investors may not find the historic growth of the business impressive, or there might be other factors at play. You can see the past revenue performance of Barrack St Investments, for yourself, below.
We note that hedge funds don’t have a meaningful investment in Barrack St Investments. As far I can tell there isn’t analyst coverage of the company, so it is probably flying under the radar.
Insider Ownership Of Barrack St Investments
While the precise definition of an insider can be subjective, almost everyone considers board members to be insiders. Company management run the business, but the CEO will answer to the board, even if he or she is a member of it.
Insider ownership is positive when it signals leadership are thinking like the true owners of the company. However, high insider ownership can also give immense power to a small group within the company. This can be negative in some circumstances.
Our most recent data indicates that insiders own a reasonable proportion of Barrack St Investments Limited. Insiders own AU$8m worth of shares in the AU$18m company. It is great to see insiders so invested in the business. It might be worth checking if those insiders have been buying recently.