Key Insights

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

• A total of 12 investors have a majority stake in the company with 50% ownership

• Institutions own 14% of Team

To get a sense of who is truly in control of Team, Inc. (NYSE:TISI), it is important to understand the ownership structure of the business. And the group that holds the biggest piece of the pie are retail investors with 48% ownership. Put another way, the group faces the maximum upside potential (or downside risk).

Clearly, retail investors benefitted the most after the company's market cap rose by US$34m last week.

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

See our latest analysis for Team

What Does The Institutional Ownership Tell Us About Team?

Many institutions measure their performance against an index that approximates the local market. So they usually pay more attention to companies that are included in major indices.

We can see that Team 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. 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 Team's historic earnings and revenue below, but keep in mind there's always more to the story.

It would appear that 35% of Team shares are controlled by hedge funds. That catches my attention because hedge funds sometimes try to influence management, or bring about changes that will create near term value for shareholders. Our data shows that Corre Partners Management, LLC is the largest shareholder with 35% of shares outstanding. Meanwhile, the second and third largest shareholders, hold 5.8% and 3.2%, of the shares outstanding, respectively.

Looking at the shareholder registry, we can see that 50% of the ownership is controlled by the top 12 shareholders, meaning that no single shareholder has a majority interest in the ownership.

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. We're not picking up on any analyst coverage of the stock at the moment, so the company is unlikely to be widely held.