Ownership research, combined with past performance data can help provide a good understanding of opportunities in a stock
If you want to know who really controls Sapura Energy Berhad (KLSE:SAPNRG), 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. Put another way, the group faces the maximum upside potential (or downside risk).
And institutional investors saw their holdings value drop by 14% last week. This set of investors may especially be concerned about the current loss, which adds to a one-year loss of 33% for shareholders. Also referred to as "smart money", institutions have a lot of sway over how a stock's price moves. Hence, if weakness in Sapura Energy Berhad's share price continues, institutional investors may feel compelled to sell the stock, which might not be ideal for individual investors.
Let's take a closer look to see what the different types of shareholders can tell us about Sapura Energy Berhad.
See our latest analysis for Sapura Energy Berhad
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.
As you can see, institutional investors have a fair amount of stake in Sapura Energy Berhad. 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. 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 Sapura Energy Berhad's earnings history below. Of course, the future is what really matters.
Sapura Energy Berhad is not owned by hedge funds. The company's largest shareholder is Permodalan Nasional Berhad, with ownership of 41%. In comparison, the second and third largest shareholders hold about 11% and 2.6% of the stock.
To make our study more interesting, we found that the top 2 shareholders have a majority ownership in the company, meaning that they are powerful enough to influence the decisions of the company.
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. While there is some analyst coverage, the company is probably not widely covered. So it could gain more attention, down the track.