Qudian Inc.'s (NYSE:QD) market cap rose US$38m last week; individual investors who hold 46% profited and so did insiders

In This Article:

Key Insights

  • Qudian's significant individual investors ownership suggests that the key decisions are influenced by shareholders from the larger public

  • 50% of the business is held by the top 8 shareholders

  • 35% of Qudian is held by insiders

To get a sense of who is truly in control of Qudian Inc. (NYSE:QD), it is important to understand the ownership structure of the business. The group holding the most number of shares in the company, around 46% to be precise, is individual investors. That is, the group stands to benefit the most if the stock rises (or lose the most if there is a downturn).

While individual investors were the group that benefitted the most from last week’s US$38m market cap gain, insiders too had a 35% share in those profits.

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

View our latest analysis for Qudian

ownership-breakdown
NYSE:QD Ownership Breakdown June 18th 2024

What Does The Institutional Ownership Tell Us About Qudian?

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 have a fair amount of stake in Qudian. 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 Qudian, (below). Of course, keep in mind that there are other factors to consider, too.

earnings-and-revenue-growth
NYSE:QD Earnings and Revenue Growth June 18th 2024

We note that hedge funds don't have a meaningful investment in Qudian. Looking at our data, we can see that the largest shareholder is the CEO Min Luo with 35% of shares outstanding. Guosheng Financial Holding Inc., Asset Management Arm is the second largest shareholder owning 6.7% of common stock, and Acadian Asset Management LLC holds about 3.4% of the company stock.

We also observed that the top 8 shareholders account for more than half of the share register, with a few smaller shareholders to balance the interests of the larger ones to a certain extent.

While studying institutional ownership for a company can add value to your research, it is also a good practice to research analyst recommendations to get a deeper understand of a stock's expected performance. Our information suggests that there isn't any analyst coverage of the stock, so it is probably little known.