Key Insights

• Significant insider control over Celtic implies vested interests in company growth

• 53% of the business is held by the top 2 shareholders

• Institutions own 23% of Celtic

To get a sense of who is truly in control of Celtic plc (LON:CCP), it is important to understand the ownership structure of the business. And the group that holds the biggest piece of the pie are individual insiders with 58% ownership. That is, the group stands to benefit the most if the stock rises (or lose the most if there is a downturn).

So, insiders of Celtic have a lot at stake and every decision they make on the company’s future is important to them from a financial point of view.

Let's delve deeper into each type of owner of Celtic, beginning with the chart below.

View our latest analysis for Celtic

What Does The Institutional Ownership Tell Us About Celtic?

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 Celtic. 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. If multiple institutions change their view on a stock at the same time, you could see the share price drop fast. It's therefore worth looking at Celtic's earnings history below. Of course, the future is what really matters.

Celtic is not owned by hedge funds. Dermot Desmond is currently the company's largest shareholder with 35% of shares outstanding. In comparison, the second and third largest shareholders hold about 19% and 13% of the stock.

To make our study more interesting, we found that the top 2 shareholders have a majority ownership in the company, meaning that they are powerful enough to influence the decisions of the company.

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. We're not picking up on any analyst coverage of the stock at the moment, so the company is unlikely to be widely held.

Insider Ownership Of Celtic

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.