What Kind Of Investors Own Most Of Acorda Therapeutics, Inc. (NASDAQ:ACOR)?

Every investor in Acorda Therapeutics, Inc. (NASDAQ:ACOR) should be aware of the most powerful shareholder groups. Generally speaking, as a company grows, institutions will increase their ownership. Conversely, insiders often decrease their ownership over time. Companies that used to be publicly owned tend to have lower insider ownership.

With a market capitalization of US$198m, Acorda Therapeutics is a small cap stock, so it might not be well known by many institutional investors. In the chart below, we can see that institutions are noticeable on the share registry. Let's delve deeper into each type of owner, to discover more about Acorda Therapeutics.

View our latest analysis for Acorda Therapeutics

What Does The Institutional Ownership Tell Us About Acorda Therapeutics?

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 Acorda Therapeutics does have institutional investors; and they hold a good portion of the company's stock. This can indicate that the company has a certain degree of credibility in the investment community. However, it is best to be wary of relying on the supposed validation that comes with institutional investors. They too, get it wrong sometimes. 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 Acorda Therapeutics' earnings history below. Of course, the future is what really matters.

It looks like hedge funds own 8.0% of Acorda 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. Looking at our data, we can see that the largest shareholder is Renaissance Technologies Corp. with 8.0% of shares outstanding. Meanwhile, the second and third largest shareholders, hold 4.7% and 4.2%, of the shares outstanding, respectively. In addition, we found that Ron Cohen, the CEO has 1.3% of the shares allocated to his name

A deeper look at our ownership data shows that the top 25 shareholders collectively hold less than half of the register, suggesting a large group of small holders where no single shareholder has a majority.

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 Acorda 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.

Most consider insider ownership a positive because it can indicate the board is well aligned with other shareholders. However, on some occasions too much power is concentrated within this group.

I can report that insiders do own shares in Acorda Therapeutics, Inc.. As individuals, the insiders collectively own US$3.5m worth of the US$198m company. It is good to see some investment by insiders, but I usually like to see higher insider holdings. It might be worth checking if those insiders have been buying.

General Public Ownership

The general public, who are mostly retail investors, collectively hold 59% of Acorda Therapeutics shares. With this size of ownership, retail investors can collectively play a role in decisions that affect shareholder returns, such as dividend policies and the appointment of directors. They can also exercise the power to decline an acquisition or merger that may not improve profitability.

Next Steps:

It's always worth thinking about the different groups who own shares in a company. But to understand Acorda Therapeutics better, we need to consider many other factors. Case in point: We've spotted 3 warning signs for Acorda Therapeutics you should be aware of, and 2 of them are a bit unpleasant.

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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