Key Insights

• Insiders appear to have a vested interest in Liaoning He Eye Hospital Group's growth, as seen by their sizeable ownership
• 51% of the business is held by the top 5 shareholders
• Past performance of a company along with ownership data serve to give a strong idea about prospects for a business

If you want to know who really controls Liaoning He Eye Hospital Group Co., LTD. (SZSE:301103), then you'll have to look at the makeup of its share registry. With 39% stake, individual insiders possess the maximum shares in the company. In other words, the group stands to gain the most (or lose the most) from their investment into the company.

And last week, insiders endured the biggest losses as the stock fell by 12%.

Let's take a closer look to see what the different types of shareholders can tell us about Liaoning He Eye Hospital Group.

What Does The Institutional Ownership Tell Us About Liaoning He Eye Hospital Group?

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 Liaoning He Eye Hospital Group 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 Liaoning He Eye Hospital Group's historic earnings and revenue below, but keep in mind there's always more to the story.

Hedge funds don't have many shares in Liaoning He Eye Hospital Group. Looking at our data, we can see that the largest shareholder is the CEO Wei He with 19% of shares outstanding. Meanwhile, the second and third largest shareholders, hold 12% and 7.7%, of the shares outstanding, respectively.

To make our study more interesting, we found that the top 5 shareholders control more than half of the company which implies that this group has considerable sway over the company's decision-making.

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

Insider Ownership Of Liaoning He Eye Hospital Group

While the precise definition of an insider can be subjective, almost everyone considers board members to be insiders. Company management run the business, but the CEO will answer to the board, even if he or she is a member of it.

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 a reasonable proportion of Liaoning He Eye Hospital Group Co., LTD.. Insiders own CN¥1.2b worth of shares in the CN¥3.0b company. It is great to see insiders so invested in the business. It might be worth checking if those insiders have been buying recently.

General Public Ownership

The general public-- including retail investors -- own 25% stake in the company, and hence can't easily be ignored. While this size of ownership may not be enough to sway a policy decision in their favour, they can still make a collective impact on company policies.

Private Equity Ownership

Private equity firms hold a 12% stake in Liaoning He Eye Hospital Group. This suggests they can be influential in key policy decisions. Some investors might be encouraged by this, since private equity are sometimes able to encourage strategies that help the market see the value in the company. Alternatively, those holders might be exiting the investment after taking it public.

Private Company Ownership

It seems that Private Companies own 13%, of the Liaoning He Eye Hospital Group stock. It might be worth looking deeper into this. If related parties, such as insiders, have an interest in one of these private companies, that should be disclosed in the annual report. Private companies may also have a strategic interest in the company.

Public Company Ownership

We can see that public companies hold 5.0% of the Liaoning He Eye Hospital Group shares on issue. This may be a strategic interest and the two companies may have related business interests. It could be that they have de-merged. This holding is probably worth investigating further.

Next Steps:

It's always worth thinking about the different groups who own shares in a company. But to understand Liaoning He Eye Hospital Group better, we need to consider many other factors. Be aware that Liaoning He Eye Hospital Group is showing 3 warning signs in our investment analysis , and 2 of those are concerning...

If you would prefer check out another company -- one with potentially superior financials -- then do not miss this free list of interesting companies, backed by strong financial data.

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.