Individual investors are EQB Inc.'s (TSE:EQB) biggest owners and were hit after market cap dropped CA$203m

Key Insights

• The considerable ownership by individual investors in EQB indicates that they collectively have a greater say in management and business strategy
• The top 25 shareholders own 49% of the company
• Insiders have sold recently

If you want to know who really controls EQB Inc. (TSE:EQB), then you'll have to look at the makeup of its share registry. We can see that individual investors own the lion's share in the company with 48% ownership. Put another way, the group faces the maximum upside potential (or downside risk).

And following last week's 6.0% decline in share price, individual investors suffered the most losses.

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

Check out our latest analysis for EQB

What Does The Institutional Ownership Tell Us About EQB?

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.

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

EQB is not owned by hedge funds. Smith Financial Corporation is currently the company's largest shareholder with 17% of shares outstanding. In comparison, the second and third largest shareholders hold about 9.6% and 3.0% of the stock. In addition, we found that Andrew R. Moor, the CEO has 1.4% of the shares allocated to their name.

A deeper look at our ownership data shows that the top 25 shareholders collectively hold less than half of the register, suggesting a large group of small holders where no single shareholder has a majority.

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. There are a reasonable number of analysts covering the stock, so it might be useful to find out their aggregate view on the future.

Insider Ownership Of EQB

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.

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 EQB Inc.. It is a pretty big company, so it is generally a positive to see some potentially meaningful alignment. In this case, they own around CA$52m 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 EQB. 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.

Private Company Ownership

We can see that Private Companies own 27%, of the shares on issue. It might be worth looking deeper into this. If related parties, such as insiders, have an interest in one of these private companies, that should be disclosed in the annual report. Private companies may also have a strategic interest in the company.

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. Be aware that EQB is showing 1 warning sign in our investment analysis , you should know about...

But ultimately it is the future, not the past, that will determine how well the owners of this business will do. Therefore we think it advisable to take a look at this free report showing whether analysts are predicting a brighter future.

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.