SEEK Limited's (ASX:SEK) 11% loss last week hit both individual investors who own 48% as well as institutions

To get a sense of who is truly in control of SEEK Limited (ASX:SEK), it is important to understand the ownership structure of the business. With 48% stake, individual investors possess the maximum shares in the company. Put another way, the group faces the maximum upside potential (or downside risk).

While institutions, who own 47% shares weren’t spared from last week’s AU$1.1b market cap drop, individual investors as a group suffered the maximum losses

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

View our latest analysis for SEEK

What Does The Institutional Ownership Tell Us About SEEK?

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.

SEEK already has institutions on the share registry. Indeed, they own a respectable stake in the company. 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 SEEK's 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 SEEK. Looking at our data, we can see that the largest shareholder is BlackRock, Inc. with 6.1% of shares outstanding. The second and third largest shareholders are Fidelity International Ltd and State Street Global Advisors, Inc., with an equal amount of shares to their name at 5.9%.

Our studies suggest that the top 25 shareholders collectively control less than half of the company's shares, meaning that the company's shares are widely disseminated and there is no dominant shareholder.

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 SEEK

While the precise definition of an insider can be subjective, almost everyone considers board members to be insiders. 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.

Most consider insider ownership a positive because it can indicate the board is well aligned with other shareholders. However, on some occasions too much power is concentrated within this group.

We can see that insiders own shares in SEEK Limited. It is a pretty big company, so it is generally a positive to see some potentially meaningful alignment. In this case, they own around AU$409m worth of shares (at current prices). If you would like to explore the question of insider alignment, you can click here to see if insiders have been buying or selling.

General Public Ownership

The general public, who are usually individual investors, hold a 48% stake in SEEK. While this group can't necessarily call the shots, it can certainly have a real influence on how the company is run.

Next Steps:

It's always worth thinking about the different groups who own shares in a company. But to understand SEEK better, we need to consider many other factors. Consider risks, for instance. Every company has them, and we've spotted 1 warning sign for SEEK you should know about.

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.