Key Insights

• Foraco International's significant individual investors ownership suggests that the key decisions are influenced by shareholders from the larger public

• 40% of the business is held by the top 17 shareholders

• Insiders have bought recently

To get a sense of who is truly in control of Foraco International SA (TSE:FAR), it is important to understand the ownership structure of the business. We can see that individual investors own the lion's share in the company with 60% ownership. Put another way, the group faces the maximum upside potential (or downside risk).

Individual insiders, on the other hand, account for 36% of the company's stockholders. Institutions often own shares in more established companies, while it's not unusual to see insiders own a fair bit of smaller companies.

Let's take a closer look to see what the different types of shareholders can tell us about Foraco International.

View our latest analysis for Foraco International

What Does The Institutional Ownership Tell Us About Foraco International?

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.

Institutions have a very small stake in Foraco International. That indicates that the company is on the radar of some funds, but it isn't particularly popular with professional investors at the moment. So if the company itself can improve over time, we may well see more institutional buyers in the future. We sometimes see a rising share price when a few big institutions want to buy a certain stock at the same time. The history of earnings and revenue, which you can see below, could be helpful in considering if more institutional investors will want the stock. Of course, there are plenty of other factors to consider, too.

Foraco International is not owned by hedge funds. Looking at our data, we can see that the largest shareholder is Jean-Pierre Charmensat with 21% of shares outstanding. For context, the second largest shareholder holds about 14% of the shares outstanding, followed by an ownership of 1.4% by the third-largest shareholder.

Our studies suggest that the top 17 shareholders collectively control less than half of the company's shares, meaning that the company's shares are widely disseminated and there is no dominant shareholder.

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.