Confluent, Inc. (NASDAQ:CFLT) is favoured by institutional owners who hold 65% of the company

Key Insights

• Significantly high institutional ownership implies Confluent's stock price is sensitive to their trading actions
• A total of 14 investors have a majority stake in the company with 51% ownership
• Insiders have sold recently

If you want to know who really controls Confluent, Inc. (NASDAQ:CFLT), then you'll have to look at the makeup of its share registry. The group holding the most number of shares in the company, around 65% to be precise, is institutions. Put another way, the group faces the maximum upside potential (or downside risk).

Since institutional have access to huge amounts of capital, their market moves tend to receive a lot of scrutiny by retail or individual investors. Therefore, a good portion of institutional money invested in the company is usually a huge vote of confidence on its future.

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

See our latest analysis for Confluent

What Does The Institutional Ownership Tell Us About Confluent?

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 Confluent 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. 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 Confluent, (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. Confluent is not owned by hedge funds. The Vanguard Group, Inc. is currently the largest shareholder, with 7.4% of shares outstanding. With 7.1% and 5.3% of the shares outstanding respectively, Jun Rao and Edward Kreps are the second and third largest shareholders. Two of the top three shareholders happen to be Top Key Executive and Chairman of the Board, respectively. That is, insiders feature higher up in the heirarchy of the company's top shareholders.

After doing some more digging, we found that the top 14 have the combined ownership of 51% in the company, suggesting that no single shareholder has significant control over the company.

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. There are a reasonable number of analysts covering the stock, so it might be useful to find out their aggregate view on the future.

Insider Ownership Of Confluent

The definition of an insider can differ slightly between different countries, but members of the board of directors always count. 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.

Our most recent data indicates that insiders own a reasonable proportion of Confluent, Inc.. It has a market capitalization of just US$7.1b, and insiders have US$1.1b worth of shares in their own names. That's quite significant. It is good to see this level of investment. You can check here to see if those insiders have been buying recently.

General Public Ownership

The general public, who are usually individual investors, hold a 14% stake in Confluent. 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

We can see that Private Companies own 4.5%, of the shares on issue. It might be worth looking deeper into this. If related parties, such as insiders, have an interest in one of these private companies, that should be disclosed in the annual report. Private companies may also have a strategic interest in the company.

Next Steps:

It's always worth thinking about the different groups who own shares in a company. But to understand Confluent better, we need to consider many other factors. To that end, you should be aware of the 3 warning signs we've spotted with Confluent .

If you would prefer discover what analysts are predicting in terms of future growth, do not miss this free report on analyst forecasts.

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.