Abeona Therapeutics Inc.'s (NASDAQ:ABEO) large institutional owners must be happy as stock continues to impress, up 11% over the past week

Key Insights

• Significantly high institutional ownership implies Abeona Therapeutics' stock price is sensitive to their trading actions
• 52% of the business is held by the top 10 shareholders
• Analyst forecasts along with ownership data serve to give a strong idea about prospects for a business

If you want to know who really controls Abeona Therapeutics Inc. (NASDAQ:ABEO), then you'll have to look at the makeup of its share registry. We can see that institutions own the lion's share in the company with 42% ownership. In other words, the group stands to gain the most (or lose the most) from their investment into the company.

And last week, institutional investors ended up benefitting the most after the company hit US$263m in market cap. One-year return to shareholders is currently 31% and last week’s gain was the icing on the cake.

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

See our latest analysis for Abeona Therapeutics

What Does The Institutional Ownership Tell Us About Abeona Therapeutics?

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.

Abeona Therapeutics 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. 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 Abeona Therapeutics, (below). Of course, keep in mind that there are other factors to consider, too.

It looks like hedge funds own 29% of Abeona Therapeutics shares. That worth noting, since hedge funds are often quite active investors, who may try to influence management. Many want to see value creation (and a higher share price) in the short term or medium term. The company's largest shareholder is Suvretta Capital Management, LLC, with ownership of 8.5%. For context, the second largest shareholder holds about 7.9% of the shares outstanding, followed by an ownership of 7.5% by the third-largest shareholder. Furthermore, CEO Vishwas Seshadri is the owner of 2.1% of the company's shares.

On further inspection, we found that more than half the company's shares are owned by the top 10 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. Quite a few analysts cover the stock, so you could look into forecast growth quite easily.

Insider Ownership Of Abeona Therapeutics

While the precise definition of an insider can be subjective, almost everyone considers board members to be insiders. Company management run the business, but the CEO will answer to the board, even if he or she is a member of it.

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 Abeona Therapeutics Inc.. It has a market capitalization of just US$263m, and insiders have US$13m worth of shares, in their own names. It is good to see some investment by insiders, but it might be worth checking if those insiders have been buying.

General Public Ownership

The general public-- including retail investors -- own 23% stake in the company, and hence can't easily be ignored. This size of ownership, while considerable, may not be enough to change company policy if the decision is not in sync with other large shareholders.

Next Steps:

It's always worth thinking about the different groups who own shares in a company. But to understand Abeona Therapeutics better, we need to consider many other factors. Take risks for example - Abeona Therapeutics has 2 warning signs we think 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.