A look at the shareholders of Bens Creek Group Plc (LON:BEN) can tell us which group is most powerful. The group holding the most number of shares in the company, around 66% to be precise, is institutions. In other words, the group stands to gain the most (or lose the most) from their investment into the company.
Institutional investors would probably welcome last week's 18% increase in share prices after a year of 74% losses as a sign that returns are likely to begin trending higher.
Let's take a closer look to see what the different types of shareholders can tell us about Bens Creek Group.
What Does The Institutional Ownership Tell Us About Bens Creek Group?
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.
Bens Creek Group already has institutions on the share registry. Indeed, they own a respectable stake in the company. 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 Bens Creek Group, (below). Of course, keep in mind that there are other factors to consider, too.
AIM:BEN Earnings and Revenue Growth May 13th 2023
Institutional investors own over 50% of the company, so together than can probably strongly influence board decisions. We note that hedge funds don't have a meaningful investment in Bens Creek Group. Our data shows that MBU Capital Group Limited is the largest shareholder with 48% of shares outstanding. Jarvis Securities plc, Asset Management Arm is the second largest shareholder owning 11% of common stock, and Adam Wilson holds about 7.0% of the company stock. Adam Wilson, who is the third-largest shareholder, also happens to hold the title of Member of the Board of Directors.
After doing some more digging, we found that the top 2 shareholders collectively control more than half of the company's shares, implying that they have considerable power to influence the company's decisions.
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 is a little analyst coverage of the stock, but not much. So there is room for it to gain more coverage.
Insider Ownership Of Bens Creek Group
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.
Most consider insider ownership a positive because it can indicate the board is well aligned with other shareholders. However, on some occasions too much power is concentrated within this group.
We can see that insiders own shares in Bens Creek Group Plc. It has a market capitalization of just UK£82m, and insiders have UK£6.6m worth of shares, in their own names. It is good to see some investment by insiders, but we usually like to see higher insider holdings. It might be worth checking if those insiders have been buying.
General Public Ownership
The general public-- including retail investors -- own 22% stake in the company, and hence can't easily be ignored. While this size of ownership may not be enough to sway a policy decision in their favour, they can still make a collective impact on company policies.
Private Company Ownership
It seems that Private Companies own 3.8%, of the Bens Creek Group stock. It's hard to draw any conclusions from this fact alone, so its worth looking into who owns those private companies. Sometimes insiders or other related parties have an interest in shares in a public company through a separate private company.
Next Steps:
It's always worth thinking about the different groups who own shares in a company. But to understand Bens Creek Group better, we need to consider many other factors. Like risks, for instance. Every company has them, and we've spotted 4 warning signs for Bens Creek Group (of which 1 is a bit concerning!) you should know about.
If you would prefer discover what analysts are predicting in terms of future growth, do not miss this freereport on analyst forecasts.
NB: Figures in this article are calculated using data from the last twelve months, which refer to the 12-month period ending on the last date of the month the financial statement is dated. This may not be consistent with full year annual report figures.
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This article by Simply Wall St is general in nature. We provide commentary based on historical data and analyst forecasts only using an unbiased methodology and our articles are not intended to be financial advice. It does not constitute a recommendation to buy or sell any stock, and does not take account of your objectives, or your financial situation. We aim to bring you long-term focused analysis driven by fundamental data. Note that our analysis may not factor in the latest price-sensitive company announcements or qualitative material. Simply Wall St has no position in any stocks mentioned.
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