Key Insights

• Insiders appear to have a vested interest in Schaffer's growth, as seen by their sizeable ownership

• 57% of the business is held by the top 5 shareholders

• Insiders have bought recently

To get a sense of who is truly in control of Schaffer Corporation Limited (ASX:SFC), it is important to understand the ownership structure of the business. We can see that individual insiders own the lion's share in the company with 54% ownership. In other words, the group stands to gain the most (or lose the most) from their investment into the company.

And looking at our data, we can see that insiders have bought shares recently. This might indicate that they expect share prices to rise in the near future.

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

View our latest analysis for Schaffer

What Does The Institutional Ownership Tell Us About Schaffer?

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 Schaffer. 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 Schaffer, (below). Of course, keep in mind that there are other factors to consider, too.

Hedge funds don't have many shares in Schaffer. With a 25% stake, CEO John Schaffer is the largest shareholder. For context, the second largest shareholder holds about 9.6% of the shares outstanding, followed by an ownership of 7.8% by the third-largest shareholder.

On looking further, we found that 57% 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. We're not picking up on any analyst coverage of the stock at the moment, so the company is unlikely to be widely held.

Insider Ownership Of Schaffer

The definition of company insiders can be subjective and does vary between jurisdictions. Our data reflects individual insiders, capturing board members at the very least. 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.