The big shareholder groups in Avation PLC (LON:AVAP) have power over the company. Insiders often own a large chunk of younger, smaller, companies while huge companies tend to have institutions as shareholders. Warren Buffett said that he likes "a business with enduring competitive advantages that is run by able and owner-oriented people." So it's nice to see some insider ownership, because it may suggest that management is owner-oriented.

Avation is a smaller company with a market capitalization of UK£77m, so it may still be flying under the radar of many institutional investors. Our analysis of the ownership of the company, below, shows that institutions own shares in the company. We can zoom in on the different ownership groups, to learn more about Avation.

See our latest analysis for Avation

What Does The Institutional Ownership Tell Us About Avation?

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.

We can see that Avation does have institutional investors; and they hold a good portion of the company's stock. 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 Avation's historic earnings and revenue below, but keep in mind there's always more to the story.

It looks like hedge funds own 23% of Avation shares. That worth noting, since hedge funds are often quite active investors, who may try to influence management. Many want to see value creation (and a higher share price) in the short term or medium term. Oceanwood Capital Management LLP is currently the largest shareholder, with 23% of shares outstanding. For context, the second largest shareholder holds about 16% of the shares outstanding, followed by an ownership of 7.7% by the third-largest shareholder. Robert Jeffries Chatfield, who is the second-largest shareholder, also happens to hold the title of Top Key Executive.

To make our study more interesting, we found that the top 4 shareholders control more than half of the company which implies that this group has considerable sway over the company's decision-making.

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.