Every investor in Next Fifteen Communications Group plc (LON:NFC) should be aware of the most powerful shareholder groups. Institutions will often hold stock in bigger companies, and we expect to see insiders owning a noticeable percentage of the smaller ones. 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.

Next Fifteen Communications Group has a market capitalization of UK£584m, so we would expect some institutional investors to have noticed the stock. In the chart below, we can see that institutions are noticeable on the share registry. We can zoom in on the different ownership groups, to learn more about Next Fifteen Communications Group.

View our latest analysis for Next Fifteen Communications Group

What Does The Institutional Ownership Tell Us About Next Fifteen Communications Group?

Many institutions measure their performance against an index that approximates the local market. So they usually pay more attention to companies that are included in major indices.

As you can see, institutional investors have a fair amount of stake in Next Fifteen Communications Group. 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 Next Fifteen Communications Group, (below). Of course, keep in mind that there are other factors to consider, too.

Institutional investors own over 50% of the company, so together than can probably strongly influence board decisions. Next Fifteen Communications Group is not owned by hedge funds. Liontrust Asset Management PLC is currently the largest shareholder, with 14% of shares outstanding. With 14% and 11% of the shares outstanding respectively, Octopus Investments Limited and Aviva Investors Global Services Limited are the second and third largest shareholders. In addition, we found that Timothy John Dyson, the CEO has 5.6% of the shares allocated to their name.

Our research also brought to light the fact that roughly 50% of the company is controlled by the top 5 shareholders suggesting that these owners wield significant influence on the business.

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. There are plenty of analysts covering the stock, so it might be worth seeing what they are forecasting, too.