Who Are The Major Shareholders In Medallion Financial Corp (NASDAQ:MFIN)?

Seth Doty

Updated Wed, May 2, 2018, 6:02 PM

In this analysis, my focus will be on developing a perspective on Medallion Financial Corp’s (NASDAQ:MFIN) latest ownership structure, a less discussed, but important factor. When it comes to ownership structure of a company, the impact has been observed in both the long-and short-term performance of shares. Differences in ownership structure of companies can have a profound effect on how management’s incentives are aligned with shareholder returns, which is why we’ll take a moment to analyse MFIN’s shareholder registry.

Check out our latest analysis for Medallion Financial

NasdaqGS:MFIN Ownership_summary May 3rd 18

Institutional Ownership

MFIN’s 16.29% institutional ownership seems enough to cause large share price movements in the case of significant share sell-off or acquisitions by institutions, particularly when there is a low level of public shares available on the market to trade. Although MFIN has a high institutional ownership, such stock moves, in the short-term, are more commonly linked to a particular type of active institutional investors – hedge funds. For shareholders in MFIN, sharp price movements may not be a major concern as active hedge funds hold a relatively small stake in the company. Although this doesn’t necessarily lead to high short-term volatility, we should dig deeper into MFIN’s ownership structure to find how the remaining owner types can affect its investment profile.

Insider Ownership

I find insiders are another important group of stakeholders, who are directly involved in making key decisions related to the use of capital. In essence, insider ownership is more about the alignment of shareholders’ interests with the management. MFIN insiders hold a significant stake of 16.27% in the company. This level of insider ownership has been found to have a negative impact on companies with consistently low PE ratios (underperformers), while it has been positive in the case of high PE ratio firms (outperformers). It may be interesting to take a look at what company insiders have been doing with their holdings lately. Insiders buying company shares can be a positive indicator of future performance, but a selling decision can simply be driven by personal financial needs.

General Public Ownership

A substantial ownership of 67.06% in MFIN is held by the general public. With this size of ownership, retail investors can collectively play a role in major company policies that affect shareholders returns, including executive remuneration and the appointment of directors. They can also exercise the power to decline an acquisition or merger that may not improve profitability.

Next Steps:

The company’s high institutional ownership makes margin of safety a very important consideration to existing investors since long bull and bear trends often emerge when these big-ticket investors see a change in long-term potential of the company. This will allow investors to reduce the impact of non-fundamental factors, such as volatile block trading impact on their portfolio value. However, if you are building an investment case for MFIN, ownership structure alone should not dictate your decision to buy or sell the stock. Rather, you should be examining fundamental factors such as the intrinsic valuation, which is a key driver of Medallion Financial’s share price. I urge you to complete your research by taking a look at the following:

Future Outlook: What are well-informed industry analysts predicting for MFIN’s future growth? Take a look at our free research report of analyst consensus for MFIN’s outlook.
Past Track Record: Has MFIN been consistently performing well irrespective of the ups and downs in the market? Go into more detail in the past performance analysis and take a look at the free visual representations of MFIN’s historicals for more clarity.
Other High-Performing Stocks: Are there other stocks that provide better prospects with proven track records? Explore our free list of these great stocks here.

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.
To help readers see pass the short term volatility of the financial market, we aim to bring you a long-term focused research analysis purely driven by fundamental data. Note that our analysis does not factor in the latest price sensitive company announcements.

The author is an independent contributor and at the time of publication had no position in the stocks mentioned.