Ezaki Glico Co., Ltd.'s (TSE:2206) top owners are retail investors with 44% stake, while 32% is held by institutions

Key Insights

• Ezaki Glico's significant retail investors ownership suggests that the key decisions are influenced by shareholders from the larger public
• A total of 16 investors have a majority stake in the company with 51% ownership
• Institutions own 32% of Ezaki Glico

If you want to know who really controls Ezaki Glico Co., Ltd. (TSE:2206), then you'll have to look at the makeup of its share registry. And the group that holds the biggest piece of the pie are retail investors with 44% ownership. Put another way, the group faces the maximum upside potential (or downside risk).

Institutions, on the other hand, account for 32% of the company's stockholders. Generally speaking, as a company grows, institutions will increase their ownership. Conversely, insiders often decrease their ownership over time.

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

View our latest analysis for Ezaki Glico

What Does The Institutional Ownership Tell Us About Ezaki Glico?

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.

Ezaki Glico 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 Ezaki Glico's historic earnings and revenue below, but keep in mind there's always more to the story.

Our data indicates that hedge funds own 6.6% of Ezaki Glico. That catches my attention because hedge funds sometimes try to influence management, or bring about changes that will create near term value for shareholders. Our data shows that Massachusetts Financial Services Company is the largest shareholder with 8.4% of shares outstanding. Dalton Investments, Inc. is the second largest shareholder owning 6.6% of common stock, and Kikusen Shoji K.K. holds about 6.5% of the company stock.

After doing some more digging, we found that the top 16 have the combined ownership of 51% in the company, suggesting that no single shareholder has significant control over 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 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 Ezaki Glico

The definition of company insiders can be subjective and does vary between jurisdictions. Our data reflects individual insiders, capturing board members at the very least. 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.

I generally consider insider ownership to be a good thing. However, on some occasions it makes it more difficult for other shareholders to hold the board accountable for decisions.

Our data suggests that insiders own under 1% of Ezaki Glico Co., Ltd. in their own names. But they may have an indirect interest through a corporate structure that we haven't picked up on. It is a pretty big company, so it would be possible for board members to own a meaningful interest in the company, without owning much of a proportional interest. In this case, they own around JP¥1.3b worth of shares (at current prices). It is good to see board members owning shares, but it might be worth checking if those insiders have been buying.

General Public Ownership

With a 44% ownership, the general public, mostly comprising of individual investors, have some degree of sway over Ezaki Glico. 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 11%, of the shares on issue. 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. Case in point: We've spotted 2 warning signs for Ezaki Glico you should be aware of.

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.