VisasQ Inc.'s (TSE:4490) most bullish insider, CEO Eiko Hashiba must be pleased with the recent 11% gain

Key Insights

• VisasQ's significant insider ownership suggests inherent interests in company's expansion
• A total of 2 investors have a majority stake in the company with 54% ownership
• Institutions own 11% of VisasQ

Every investor in VisasQ Inc. (TSE:4490) should be aware of the most powerful shareholder groups. And the group that holds the biggest piece of the pie are individual insiders with 50% ownership. In other words, the group stands to gain the most (or lose the most) from their investment into the company.

Clearly, insiders benefitted the most after the company's market cap rose by JP¥1.4b last week.

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

See our latest analysis for VisasQ

What Does The Institutional Ownership Tell Us About VisasQ?

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.

We can see that VisasQ does have institutional investors; and they hold a good portion of the company's stock. This suggests some credibility amongst professional investors. But we can't rely on that fact alone since institutions make bad investments sometimes, just like everyone does. 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 VisasQ's historic earnings and revenue below, but keep in mind there's always more to the story.

Hedge funds don't have many shares in VisasQ. Looking at our data, we can see that the largest shareholder is the CEO Eiko Hashiba with 48% of shares outstanding. Meanwhile, the second and third largest shareholders, hold 6.0% and 4.5%, of the shares outstanding, respectively.

To make our study more interesting, we found that the top 2 shareholders have a majority ownership in the company, meaning that they are powerful enough to influence the decisions of the company.

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 is a little analyst coverage of the stock, but not much. So there is room for it to gain more coverage.

Insider Ownership Of VisasQ

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.

It seems that insiders own more than half the VisasQ Inc. stock. This gives them a lot of power. That means they own JP¥7.4b worth of shares in the JP¥15b company. That's quite meaningful. Most would be pleased to see the board is investing alongside them. You may wish todiscover (for free) if they have been buying or 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.

Private Equity Ownership

With a stake of 6.0%, private equity firms could influence the VisasQ board. Sometimes we see private equity stick around for the long term, but generally speaking they have a shorter investment horizon and -- as the name suggests -- don't invest in public companies much. After some time they may look to sell and redeploy capital elsewhere.

Next Steps:

While it is well worth considering the different groups that own a company, there are other factors that are even more important. To that end, you should be aware of the 1 warning sign we've spotted with VisasQ .

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.