Key Insights

• Given the large stake in the stock by institutions, Capital's stock price might be vulnerable to their trading decisions

• 53% of the business is held by the top 7 shareholders

• Insiders own 20% of Capital

Every investor in Capital Limited (LON:CAPD) should be aware of the most powerful shareholder groups. And the group that holds the biggest piece of the pie are institutions with 48% ownership. In other words, the group stands to gain the most (or lose the most) from their investment into the company.

Because institutional owners have a huge pool of resources and liquidity, their investing decisions tend to carry a great deal of weight, especially with individual investors. Hence, having a considerable amount of institutional money invested in a company is often regarded as a desirable trait.

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

View our latest analysis for Capital

What Does The Institutional Ownership Tell Us About Capital?

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 Capital 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. 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 Capital's earnings history below. Of course, the future is what really matters.

We note that hedge funds don't have a meaningful investment in Capital. From our data, we infer that the largest shareholder is Jamie Boyton (who also holds the title of Top Key Executive) with 13% of shares outstanding. Its usually considered a good sign when insiders own a significant number of shares in the company, and in this case, we're glad to see a company insider play the role of a key stakeholder. Meanwhile, the second and third largest shareholders, hold 9.9% and 9.2%, of the shares outstanding, respectively.

We did some more digging and found that 7 of the top shareholders account for roughly 53% of the register, implying that along with larger shareholders, there are a few smaller shareholders, thereby balancing out each others interests somewhat.

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.