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Yahoo Finance Plus Institutional investors are Casey's General Stores, Inc.'s (NASDAQ:CASY) biggest bettors and were rewarded after last week's US$1.3b market cap gain
Key Insights
Institutions' substantial holdings in Casey's General Stores implies that they have significant influence over the company's share price
The top 14 shareholders own 51% of the company
Ownership research along with analyst forecasts data help provide a good understanding of opportunities in a stock
If you want to know who really controls Casey's General Stores, Inc. (NASDAQ:CASY), 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 86% to be precise, is institutions. Put another way, the group faces the maximum upside potential (or downside risk).
Last week’s 16% gain means that institutional investors were on the positive end of the spectrum even as the company has shown strong longer-term trends. One-year return to shareholders is currently 29% and last week’s gain was the icing on the cake.
Let's take a closer look to see what the different types of shareholders can tell us about Casey's General Stores.
View our latest analysis for Casey's General Stores
What Does The Institutional Ownership Tell Us About Casey's General Stores?
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.
Casey's General Stores already has institutions on the share registry. Indeed, they own a respectable stake in the company. This can indicate that the company has a certain degree of credibility in the investment community. However, it is best to be wary of relying on the supposed validation that comes with institutional investors. They too, get it wrong sometimes. 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 Casey's General Stores' historic earnings and revenue below, but keep in mind there's always more to the story.
Since institutional investors own more than half the issued stock, the board will likely have to pay attention to their preferences. Casey's General Stores is not owned by hedge funds. The Vanguard Group, Inc. is currently the company's largest shareholder with 10% of shares outstanding. For context, the second largest shareholder holds about 8.9% of the shares outstanding, followed by an ownership of 6.6% by the third-largest shareholder.
After doing some more digging, we found that the top 14 have the combined ownership of 51% in the company, suggesting that no single shareholder has significant control over 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. There are a reasonable number of analysts covering the stock, so it might be useful to find out their aggregate view on the future.
Insider Ownership Of Casey's General Stores
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.
Most consider insider ownership a positive because it can indicate the board is well aligned with other shareholders. However, on some occasions too much power is concentrated within this group.
Our most recent data indicates that insiders own less than 1% of Casey's General Stores, Inc.. Being so large, we would not expect insiders to own a large proportion of the stock. Collectively, they own US$50m of stock. In this sort of situation, it can be more interesting to see if those insiders have been buying or selling.
General Public Ownership
The general public-- including retail investors -- own 13% stake in the company, and hence can't easily be ignored. While this group can't necessarily call the shots, it can certainly have a real influence on how the company is run.
Next Steps:
It's always worth thinking about the different groups who own shares in a company. But to understand Casey's General Stores better, we need to consider many other factors. Be aware that Casey's General Stores is showing 1 warning sign in our investment analysis , you should know about...
But ultimately it is the future, not the past, that will determine how well the owners of this business will do. Therefore we think it advisable to take a look at this free report showing whether analysts are predicting a brighter future.
NB: Figures in this article are calculated using data from the last twelve months, which refer to the 12-month period ending on the last date of the month the financial statement is dated. This may not be consistent with full year annual report figures.
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This article by Simply Wall St is general in nature. We provide commentary based on historical data and analyst forecasts only using an unbiased methodology and our articles are not intended to be financial advice. It does not constitute a recommendation to buy or sell any stock, and does not take account of your objectives, or your financial situation. We aim to bring you long-term focused analysis driven by fundamental data. Note that our analysis may not factor in the latest price-sensitive company announcements or qualitative material. Simply Wall St has no position in any stocks mentioned.
