The considerable ownership by individual investors in Yellow Cake indicates that they collectively have a greater say in management and business strategy
If you want to know who really controls Yellow Cake plc (LON:YCA), then you'll have to look at the makeup of its share registry. And the group that holds the biggest piece of the pie are individual investors with 53% ownership. Put another way, the group faces the maximum upside potential (or downside risk).
And institutions on the other hand have a 37% ownership in the company. Generally speaking, as a company grows, institutions will increase their ownership. Conversely, insiders often decrease their ownership over time.
Let's take a closer look to see what the different types of shareholders can tell us about Yellow Cake.
What Does The Institutional Ownership Tell Us About Yellow Cake?
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.
As you can see, institutional investors have a fair amount of stake in Yellow Cake. 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 Yellow Cake's historic earnings and revenue below, but keep in mind there's always more to the story.
AIM:YCA Earnings and Revenue Growth April 19th 2025
Our data indicates that hedge funds own 10% of Yellow Cake. That catches my attention because hedge funds sometimes try to influence management, or bring about changes that will create near term value for shareholders. Looking at our data, we can see that the largest shareholder is MM Asset Management Inc with 10% of shares outstanding. With 6.7% and 5.1% of the shares outstanding respectively, Mirae Asset Global Investments Co., Ltd. and Plenisfer Investments SGR S.p.A. are the second and third largest shareholders.
After doing some more digging, we found that the top 25 have the combined ownership of 50% 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 is a little analyst coverage of the stock, but not much. So there is room for it to gain more coverage.
Insider Ownership Of Yellow Cake
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. 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.
We note our data does not show any board members holding shares, personally. Given we are not picking up on insider ownership, we may have missing data. Therefore, it would be interesting to assess the CEO compensation and tenure, here.
General Public Ownership
The general public, who are usually individual investors, hold a substantial 53% stake in Yellow Cake, suggesting it is a fairly popular stock. With this amount of ownership, retail investors can collectively play a role in decisions that affect shareholder returns, such as dividend policies and the appointment of directors. They can also exercise the power to vote on acquisitions or mergers that may not improve profitability.
Next Steps:
It's always worth thinking about the different groups who own shares in a company. But to understand Yellow Cake better, we need to consider many other factors.
If you would prefer discover what analysts are predicting in terms of future growth, do not miss this freereport on analyst forecasts.
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.
