Key Insights

• Significant control over DRDGOLD by public companies implies that the general public has more power to influence management and governance-related decisions

• Sibanye Stillwater Limited owns 50% of the company

• Institutions own 26% of DRDGOLD

If you want to know who really controls DRDGOLD Limited (NYSE:DRD), 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 50% to be precise, is public companies. Put another way, the group faces the maximum upside potential (or downside risk).

Institutions, on the other hand, account for 26% of the company's stockholders. Institutions will often hold stock in bigger companies, and we expect to see insiders owning a noticeable percentage of the smaller ones.

In the chart below, we zoom in on the different ownership groups of DRDGOLD.

Check out our latest analysis for DRDGOLD

What Does The Institutional Ownership Tell Us About DRDGOLD?

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.

DRDGOLD already has institutions on the share registry. Indeed, they own a respectable stake in the company. This suggests some credibility amongst professional investors. But we can't rely on that fact alone since institutions make bad investments sometimes, just like everyone does. When multiple institutions own a stock, there's always a risk that they are in a 'crowded trade'. When such a trade goes wrong, multiple parties may compete to sell stock fast. This risk is higher in a company without a history of growth. You can see DRDGOLD's historic earnings and revenue below, but keep in mind there's always more to the story.

DRDGOLD is not owned by hedge funds. Looking at our data, we can see that the largest shareholder is Sibanye Stillwater Limited with 50% of shares outstanding. With such a huge stake in the ownership, we infer that they have significant control of the future of the company. With 7.1% and 3.3% of the shares outstanding respectively, Van Eck Associates Corporation and Public Investment Corporation Limited are the second and third largest shareholders.

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. There is some analyst coverage of the stock, but it could still become more well known, with time.

Insider Ownership Of DRDGOLD

The definition of company insiders can be subjective and does vary between jurisdictions. Our data reflects individual insiders, capturing board members at the very least. The company management answer to the board and the latter should represent the interests of shareholders. Notably, sometimes top-level managers are on the board themselves.