Key Insights

• The considerable ownership by individual investors in Cascades indicates that they collectively have a greater say in management and business strategy

• The top 14 shareholders own 50% of the company

• Recent sales by insiders

A look at the shareholders of Cascades Inc. (TSE:CAS) can tell us which group is most powerful. And the group that holds the biggest piece of the pie are individual investors with 45% ownership. That is, the group stands to benefit the most if the stock rises (or lose the most if there is a downturn).

Institutions, on the other hand, account for 31% of the company's stockholders. Large companies usually have institutions as shareholders, and we usually see insiders owning shares in smaller companies.

Let's take a closer look to see what the different types of shareholders can tell us about Cascades.

View our latest analysis for Cascades

What Does The Institutional Ownership Tell Us About Cascades?

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 Cascades. 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. When multiple institutions own a stock, there's always a risk that they are in a 'crowded trade'. When such a trade goes wrong, multiple parties may compete to sell stock fast. This risk is higher in a company without a history of growth. You can see Cascades' historic earnings and revenue below, but keep in mind there's always more to the story.

We note that hedge funds don't have a meaningful investment in Cascades. Looking at our data, we can see that the largest shareholder is Laurent Lemaire with 12% of shares outstanding. For context, the second largest shareholder holds about 10% of the shares outstanding, followed by an ownership of 5.7% by the third-largest shareholder. Alain Lemaire, 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 14 have the combined ownership of 50% in the company, suggesting that no single shareholder has significant control over the company.

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 are plenty of analysts covering the stock, so it might be worth seeing what they are forecasting, too.