Both retail investors who control a good portion of KENKO Mayonnaise Co.,Ltd. (TSE:2915) along with institutions must be dismayed after last week's 11% decrease

Key Insights

• Significant control over KENKO MayonnaiseLtd by retail investors implies that the general public has more power to influence management and governance-related decisions
• A total of 18 investors have a majority stake in the company with 50% ownership
• Institutions own 33% of KENKO MayonnaiseLtd

If you want to know who really controls KENKO Mayonnaise Co.,Ltd. (TSE:2915), 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 47% ownership. In other words, the group stands to gain the most (or lose the most) from their investment into the company.

Following a 11% decrease in the stock price last week, retail investors suffered the most losses, but institutions who own 33% stock also took a hit.

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

See our latest analysis for KENKO MayonnaiseLtd

What Does The Institutional Ownership Tell Us About KENKO MayonnaiseLtd?

Institutions typically measure themselves against a benchmark when reporting to their own investors, so they often become more enthusiastic about a stock once it's included in a major index. We would expect most companies to have some institutions on the register, especially if they are growing.

As you can see, institutional investors have a fair amount of stake in KENKO MayonnaiseLtd. 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 KENKO MayonnaiseLtd'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 KENKO MayonnaiseLtd. T&A K.K. is currently the largest shareholder, with 9.1% of shares outstanding. For context, the second largest shareholder holds about 4.7% of the shares outstanding, followed by an ownership of 3.9% by the third-largest shareholder.

After doing some more digging, we found that the top 18 have the combined ownership of 50% in the company, suggesting that no single shareholder has significant control over the company.

Researching institutional ownership is a good way to gauge and filter a stock's expected performance. The same can be achieved by studying analyst sentiments. 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 KENKO MayonnaiseLtd

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.

We can report that insiders do own shares in KENKO Mayonnaise Co.,Ltd.. As individuals, the insiders collectively own JP¥456m worth of the JP¥33b company. This shows at least some alignment. You can click here to see if those insiders have been buying or selling.

General Public Ownership

The general public-- including retail investors -- own 47% stake in the company, and hence can't 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 13%, of the KENKO MayonnaiseLtd stock. 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.

Public Company Ownership

Public companies currently own 5.9% of KENKO MayonnaiseLtd stock. This may be a strategic interest and the two companies may have related business interests. It could be that they have de-merged. This holding is probably worth investigating further.

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 be aware of the 2 warning signs we've spotted with KENKO MayonnaiseLtd .

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.