With 43% ownership of the shares, Jardine Matheson Holdings Limited (SGX:J36) is heavily dominated by institutional owners

Key Insights

• Significantly high institutional ownership implies Jardine Matheson Holdings' stock price is sensitive to their trading actions
• The top 8 shareholders own 51% of the company
• Insiders have bought recently

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Every investor in Jardine Matheson Holdings Limited (SGX:J36) should be aware of the most powerful shareholder groups. And the group that holds the biggest piece of the pie are institutions with 43% ownership. Put another way, the group faces the maximum upside potential (or downside risk).

Because institutional owners have a huge pool of resources and liquidity, their investing decisions tend to carry a great deal of weight, especially with individual investors. As a result, a sizeable amount of institutional money invested in a firm is generally viewed as a positive attribute.

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

See our latest analysis for Jardine Matheson Holdings

What Does The Institutional Ownership Tell Us About Jardine Matheson Holdings?

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.

Jardine Matheson Holdings 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 Jardine Matheson Holdings' historic earnings and revenue below, but keep in mind there's always more to the story.

Hedge funds don't have many shares in Jardine Matheson Holdings. Our data shows that Butterfield Asset Management Ltd. is the largest shareholder with 14% of shares outstanding. In comparison, the second and third largest shareholders hold about 13% and 5.0% of the stock.

On further inspection, we found that more than half the company's shares are owned by the top 8 shareholders, suggesting that the interests of the larger shareholders are balanced out to an extent by the smaller ones.

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 are plenty of analysts covering the stock, so it might be worth seeing what they are forecasting, too.

Insider Ownership Of Jardine Matheson Holdings

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 see that insiders own shares in Jardine Matheson Holdings Limited. Insiders own US$980m worth of shares (at current prices). we sometimes take an interest in whether they have been buying or selling.

General Public Ownership

With a 37% ownership, the general public, mostly comprising of individual investors, have some degree of sway over Jardine Matheson Holdings. 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 Jardine Matheson 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:

It's always worth thinking about the different groups who own shares in a company. But to understand Jardine Matheson Holdings better, we need to consider many other factors. To that end, you should be aware of the 1 warning sign we've spotted with Jardine Matheson Holdings .

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.