Significantly high institutional ownership implies Coast Entertainment Holdings' stock price is sensitive to their trading actions
54% of the business is held by the top 7 shareholders
Analyst forecasts along with ownership data serve to give a strong idea about prospects for a business
To get a sense of who is truly in control of Coast Entertainment Holdings Limited (ASX:CEH), it is important to understand the ownership structure of the business. And the group that holds the biggest piece of the pie are institutions with 62% ownership. That is, the group stands to benefit the most if the stock rises (or lose the most if there is a downturn).
Since institutional have access to huge amounts of capital, their market moves tend to receive a lot of scrutiny by retail or individual investors. Hence, having a considerable amount of institutional money invested in a company is often regarded as a desirable trait.
In the chart below, we zoom in on the different ownership groups of Coast Entertainment Holdings.
What Does The Institutional Ownership Tell Us About Coast Entertainment Holdings?
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.
As you can see, institutional investors have a fair amount of stake in Coast Entertainment Holdings. 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 Coast Entertainment Holdings' historic earnings and revenue below, but keep in mind there's always more to the story.
earnings-and-revenue-growth
Institutional investors own over 50% of the company, so together than can probably strongly influence board decisions. Coast Entertainment Holdings is not owned by hedge funds. The company's largest shareholder is Perpetual Limited, with ownership of 13%. For context, the second largest shareholder holds about 12% of the shares outstanding, followed by an ownership of 8.7% by the third-largest shareholder.
On further inspection, we found that more than half the company's shares are owned by the top 7 shareholders, suggesting that the interests of the larger shareholders are balanced out to an extent by the smaller ones.
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 Coast Entertainment Holdings
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.
I generally consider insider ownership to be a good thing. However, on some occasions it makes it more difficult for other shareholders to hold the board accountable for decisions.
We can see that insiders own shares in Coast Entertainment Holdings Limited. In their own names, insiders own AU$11m worth of stock in the AU$216m company. This shows at least some alignment, but we usually like to see larger insider holdings. You can click here to see if those insiders have been buying or selling.
General Public Ownership
The general public-- including retail investors -- own 28% 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.
Public Company Ownership
We can see that public companies hold 5.1% of the Coast Entertainment Holdings shares on issue. This may be a strategic interest and the two companies may have related business interests. It could be that they have de-merged. This holding is probably worth investigating further.
Next Steps:
I find it very interesting to look at who exactly owns a company. But to truly gain insight, we need to consider other information, too.
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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