What Kind Of Shareholders Own Gravity Co., Ltd. (NASDAQ:GRVY)?

The big shareholder groups in Gravity Co., Ltd. (NASDAQ:GRVY) have power over the company. Institutions will often hold stock in bigger companies, and we expect to see insiders owning a noticeable percentage of the smaller ones. Companies that have been privatized tend to have low insider ownership.

With a market capitalization of US$1.2b, Gravity is a decent size, so it is probably on the radar of institutional investors. In the chart below, we can see that institutions own shares in the company. Let's delve deeper into each type of owner, to discover more about Gravity.

View our latest analysis for Gravity

What Does The Institutional Ownership Tell Us About Gravity?

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.

We can see that Gravity does have institutional investors; and they hold a good portion of the company's stock. 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 Gravity's historic earnings and revenue below, but keep in mind there's always more to the story.

Gravity is not owned by hedge funds. The company's largest shareholder is GungHo Online Entertainment, Inc., with ownership of 59%. With such a huge stake in the ownership, we infer that they have significant control of the future of the company. Meanwhile, the second and third largest shareholders, hold 4.6% and 0.6%, of the shares outstanding, respectively.

While it makes sense to study institutional ownership data for a company, it also makes sense to study analyst sentiments to know which way the wind is blowing. Our information suggests that there isn't any analyst coverage of the stock, so it is probably little known.

Insider Ownership Of Gravity

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.

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 note our data does not show any board members holding shares, personally. Given we are not picking up on insider ownership, we may have missing data. Therefore, it would be interesting to assess the CEO compensation and tenure, here.

General Public Ownership

The general public holds a 33% stake in Gravity. While this group can't necessarily call the shots, it can certainly have a real influence on how the company is run.

Public Company Ownership

We can see that public companies hold 59% of the Gravity shares on issue. 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:

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 Gravity you should be aware of.

If you would prefer check out another company -- one with potentially superior financials -- then do not miss this free list of interesting companies, backed by strong financial data.

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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