A look at the shareholders of Ridley Corporation Limited (ASX:RIC) can tell us which group is most powerful. Generally speaking, as a company grows, institutions will increase their ownership. Conversely, insiders often decrease their ownership over time. I generally like to see some degree of insider ownership, even if only a little. As Nassim Nicholas Taleb said, 'Don’t tell me what you think, tell me what you have in your portfolio.

Ridley is a smaller company with a market capitalization of AU$546m, so it may still be flying under the radar of many institutional investors. In the chart below, we can see that institutional investors have bought into the company. Let's take a closer look to see what the different types of shareholders can tell us about Ridley.

View our latest analysis for Ridley

What Does The Institutional Ownership Tell Us About Ridley?

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.

Ridley already has institutions on the share registry. Indeed, they own a respectable stake in the company. This suggests some credibility amongst professional investors. But we can't rely on that fact alone since institutions make bad investments sometimes, just like everyone does. 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 Ridley's earnings history below. Of course, the future is what really matters.

We note that hedge funds don't have a meaningful investment in Ridley. Looking at our data, we can see that the largest shareholder is Insitor Holdings, LLC with 19% of shares outstanding. Meanwhile, the second and third largest shareholders, hold 10.0% and 7.4%, of the shares outstanding, respectively.

We also observed that the top 6 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 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.

Insider Ownership Of Ridley

While the precise definition of an insider can be subjective, almost everyone considers board members to be insiders. Management ultimately answers to the board. However, it is not uncommon for managers to be executive board members, especially if they are a founder or the CEO.