If you want to know who really controls Southern Cross Electrical Engineering Limited (ASX:SXE), then you'll have to look at the makeup of its share registry. Institutions will often hold stock in bigger companies, and we expect to see insiders owning a noticeable percentage of the smaller ones. I quite like to see at least a little bit of insider ownership. As Charlie Munger said 'Show me the incentive and I will show you the outcome.

With a market capitalization of AU$175m, Southern Cross Electrical Engineering is a small cap stock, so it might not be well known by many institutional investors. Taking a look at our data on the ownership groups (below), it seems that institutions own shares in the company. Let's take a closer look to see what the different types of shareholders can tell us about Southern Cross Electrical Engineering.

See our latest analysis for Southern Cross Electrical Engineering

What Does The Institutional Ownership Tell Us About Southern Cross Electrical Engineering?

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.

Southern Cross Electrical Engineering 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. 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 Southern Cross Electrical Engineering, (below). Of course, keep in mind that there are other factors to consider, too.

Southern Cross Electrical Engineering is not owned by hedge funds. Our data shows that Gianfranco Tomasi is the largest shareholder with 18% of shares outstanding. First Sentier Investors (Australia) IM Ltd is the second largest shareholder owning 9.0% of common stock, and Mitsubishi UFJ Kokusai Asset Management Co., Ltd. holds about 8.8% of the company stock. Additionally, the company's CEO Graeme Dunn directly holds 0.6% of the total shares outstanding.

On looking further, we found that 51% of the shares are owned by the top 5 shareholders. In other words, these shareholders have a meaningful say in the decisions of the company.

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. There is some analyst coverage of the stock, but it could still become more well known, with time.