Following recent decline, Medley, Inc.'s (TSE:4480) top shareholder CEO Kohei Takiguchi sees holdings value drop by 9.4%

Key Insights

• Significant insider control over Medley implies vested interests in company growth
• A total of 6 investors have a majority stake in the company with 51% ownership
• Institutions own 30% of Medley

Every investor in Medley, Inc. (TSE:4480) should be aware of the most powerful shareholder groups. And the group that holds the biggest piece of the pie are individual insiders with 34% ownership. Put another way, the group faces the maximum upside potential (or downside risk).

And last week, insiders endured the biggest losses as the stock fell by 9.4%.

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

Check out our latest analysis for Medley

What Does The Institutional Ownership Tell Us About Medley?

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.

Medley 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. If multiple institutions change their view on a stock at the same time, you could see the share price drop fast. It's therefore worth looking at Medley's earnings history below. Of course, the future is what really matters.

Hedge funds don't have many shares in Medley. Looking at our data, we can see that the largest shareholder is the CEO Kohei Takiguchi with 20% of shares outstanding. With 10% and 6.7% of the shares outstanding respectively, Goichiro Toyoda and Polar Capital Holdings Plc are the second and third largest shareholders.

On further inspection, we found that more than half the company's shares are owned by the top 6 shareholders, suggesting that the interests of the larger shareholders are balanced out to an extent by the smaller ones.

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 Medley

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.

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 information suggests that insiders maintain a significant holding in Medley, Inc.. Insiders own JP¥35b worth of shares in the JP¥103b company. 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

With a 30% ownership, the general public, mostly comprising of individual investors, have some degree of sway over Medley. 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.

Next Steps:

While it is well worth considering the different groups that own a company, there are other factors that are even more important. Case in point: We've spotted 1 warning sign for Medley you should be aware of.

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.