What Type Of Shareholders Make Up S E A Holdings Limited's (HKG:251) Share Registry?

The big shareholder groups in S E A Holdings Limited (HKG:251) have power over the company. Large companies usually have institutions as shareholders, and we usually see insiders owning shares in smaller companies. I generally like to see some degree of insider ownership, even if only a little. As Nassim Nicholas Taleb said, 'Don’t tell me what you think, tell me what you have in your portfolio.

With a market capitalization of HK$4.7b, S E A Holdings is a small cap stock, so it might not be well known by many institutional investors. In the chart below, we can see that institutional investors have not yet purchased much of the company. Let's delve deeper into each type of owner, to discover more about S E A Holdings.

View our latest analysis for S E A Holdings

What Does The Lack Of Institutional Ownership Tell Us About S E A Holdings?

We don't tend to see institutional investors holding stock of companies that are very risky, thinly traded, or very small. Though we do sometimes see large companies without institutions on the register, it's not particularly common.

There are many reasons why a company might not have any institutions on the share registry. It may be hard for institutions to buy large amounts of shares, if liquidity (the amount of shares traded each day) is low. If the company has not needed to raise capital, institutions might lack the opportunity to build a position. It is also possible that fund managers don't own the stock because they aren't convinced it will perform well. S E A Holdings might not have the sort of past performance institutions are looking for, or perhaps they simply have not studied the business closely.

We note that hedge funds don't have a meaningful investment in S E A Holdings. JCS Limited is currently the company's largest shareholder with 53% of shares outstanding. With such a huge stake in the ownership, we infer that they have significant control of the future of the company. Wing Chi Lu is the second largest shareholder owning 17% of common stock, and Lincoln Lu holds about 3.8% of the company stock. Two of the top three shareholders happen to be Top Key Executive and Member of the Board of Directors, respectively. That is, insiders feature higher up in the heirarchy of the company's top shareholders.

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. As far I can tell there isn't analyst coverage of the company, so it is probably flying under the radar.

Insider Ownership Of S E A Holdings

The definition of an insider can differ slightly between different countries, but members of the board of directors always count. Management ultimately answers to the board. However, it is not uncommon for managers to be executive board members, especially if they are a founder or the CEO.

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.

Our most recent data indicates that insiders own a reasonable proportion of S E A Holdings Limited. It has a market capitalization of just HK$4.7b, and insiders have HK$1.0b worth of shares in their own names. It is great to see insiders so invested in the business. It might be worth checking if those insiders have been buying recently.

General Public Ownership

The general public, with a 24% stake in the company, will not 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.

Private Company Ownership

It seems that Private Companies own 53%, of the S E A Holdings stock. It's hard to draw any conclusions from this fact alone, so its worth looking into who owns those private companies. Sometimes insiders or other related parties have an interest in shares in a public company through a separate private 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. To that end, you should learn about the 5 warning signs we've spotted with S E A Holdings (including 2 which is are significant) .

If you would prefer check out another company -- one with potentially superior financials -- then do not miss this free list of interesting companies, backed by strong financial data.

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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