Institutional investors have a lot riding on Helia Group Limited (ASX:HLI) with 66% ownership

Key Insights

• Significantly high institutional ownership implies Helia Group's stock price is sensitive to their trading actions
• A total of 8 investors have a majority stake in the company with 50% ownership
• Recent purchases by insiders

If you want to know who really controls Helia Group Limited (ASX:HLI), then you'll have to look at the makeup of its share registry. With 66% stake, institutions possess the maximum shares in the company. In other words, the group stands to gain the most (or lose the most) from their investment into the company.

Last week’s 8.3% gain means that institutional investors were on the positive end of the spectrum even as the company has shown strong longer-term trends. One-year return to shareholders is currently 33% and last week’s gain was the icing on the cake.

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

View our latest analysis for Helia Group

What Does The Institutional Ownership Tell Us About Helia Group?

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.

We can see that Helia Group does have institutional investors; and they hold a good portion of the company's stock. 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. 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 Helia Group's earnings history below. Of course, the future is what really matters.

Investors should note that institutions actually own more than half the company, so they can collectively wield significant power. Hedge funds don't have many shares in Helia Group. Dimensional Fund Advisors LP is currently the largest shareholder, with 8.4% of shares outstanding. With 8.4% and 7.1% of the shares outstanding respectively, Australian Ethical Investment Limited and First Sentier Investors (Australia) IM Ltd are the second and third largest shareholders.

We also observed that the top 8 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 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. Quite a few analysts cover the stock, so you could look into forecast growth quite easily.

Insider Ownership Of Helia Group

While the precise definition of an insider can be subjective, almost everyone considers board members to be insiders. Company management run the business, but the CEO will answer to the board, even if he or she is a member of it.

Insider ownership is positive when it signals leadership are thinking like the true owners of the company. However, high insider ownership can also give immense power to a small group within the company. This can be negative in some circumstances.

We can report that insiders do own shares in Helia Group Limited. In their own names, insiders own AU$15m worth of stock in the AU$1.2b company. Some would say this shows alignment of interests between shareholders and the board. But it might be worth checking if those insiders have been selling.

General Public Ownership

The general public-- including retail investors -- own 32% stake in the company, and hence can't easily be ignored. This size of ownership, while considerable, may not be enough to change company policy if the decision is not in sync with other large shareholders.

Next Steps:

It's always worth thinking about the different groups who own shares in a company. But to understand Helia Group better, we need to consider many other factors. To that end, you should learn about the 2 warning signs we've spotted with Helia Group (including 1 which is significant) .

Ultimately the future is most important. You can access this free report on analyst forecasts for the company.

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.