How Much Of Evoqua Water Technologies Corp. (NYSE:AQUA) Do Institutions Own?

The big shareholder groups in Evoqua Water Technologies Corp. (NYSE:AQUA) have power over the company. Generally speaking, as a company grows, institutions will increase their ownership. Conversely, insiders often decrease their ownership over time. We also tend to see lower insider ownership in companies that were previously publicly owned.

Evoqua Water Technologies is a pretty big company. It has a market capitalization of US$3.3b. Normally institutions would own a significant portion of a company this size. Our analysis of the ownership of the company, below, shows that institutional investors have bought into the company. Let's take a closer look to see what the different types of shareholders can tell us about Evoqua Water Technologies.

Check out our latest analysis for Evoqua Water Technologies

What Does The Institutional Ownership Tell Us About Evoqua Water Technologies?

Many institutions measure their performance against an index that approximates the local market. So they usually pay more attention to companies that are included in major indices.

Evoqua Water Technologies already has institutions on the share registry. Indeed, they own a respectable stake in the company. 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. It is not uncommon to see a big share price drop if two large institutional investors try to sell out of a stock at the same time. So it is worth checking the past earnings trajectory of Evoqua Water Technologies, (below). Of course, keep in mind that there are other factors to consider, too.

Since institutional investors own more than half the issued stock, the board will likely have to pay attention to their preferences. Evoqua Water Technologies is not owned by hedge funds. The Vanguard Group, Inc. is currently the largest shareholder, with 8.0% of shares outstanding. In comparison, the second and third largest shareholders hold about 7.1% and 4.0% of the stock.

Looking at the shareholder registry, we can see that 50% of the ownership is controlled by the top 17 shareholders, meaning that no single shareholder has a majority interest in the ownership.

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 Evoqua Water Technologies

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.

Insider ownership is positive when it signals leadership are thinking like the true owners of the company. However, high insider ownership can also give immense power to a small group within the company. This can be negative in some circumstances.

We can see that insiders own shares in Evoqua Water Technologies Corp.. The insiders have a meaningful stake worth US$34m. Most would see this as a real positive. Most would say this shows alignment of interests between shareholders and the board. Still, it might be worth checking if those insiders have been selling.

General Public Ownership

With a 16% ownership, the general public have some degree of sway over Evoqua Water Technologies. 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:

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. Be aware that Evoqua Water Technologies is showing 2 warning signs in our investment analysis , and 1 of those shouldn't be ignored...

If you are like me, you may want to think about whether this company will grow or shrink. Luckily, you can check this free report showing analyst forecasts for its 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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