Yahoo Finance What You Must Know About Houston Wire & Cable Company’s (NASDAQ:HWCC) Major Investors
In this article, I’m going to take a look at Houston Wire & Cable Company’s (NASDAQ:HWCC) latest ownership structure, a non-fundamental factor which is important, but remains a less discussed subject among investors. A company’s ownership structure is often linked to its share performance in both the long- and short-term. Since the effect of an active institutional investor with a similar ownership as a passive pension-fund can be vastly different on a company’s corporate governance and accountability of shareholders, investors should take a closer look at HWCC’s shareholder registry.
View our latest analysis for Houston Wire & Cable
Institutional Ownership
Institutions account for 64.30% of HWCC’s outstanding shares, a significant enough holding to move stock prices if they start buying and selling in large quantities, especially when there are relatively small amounts of shares available on the market to trade. These moves, at least in the short-term, are generally observed in an institutional ownership mix comprising of active stock pickers, in particular levered hedge funds, which can cause large price swings. Hedge funds, considered active investors, hold a 9.00% stake in the company, which may be the cause of high short-term volatility in the stock price. But I also examine other ownership types and their potential impact on HWCC’s investment case.
Insider Ownership
I find insiders are an 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. HWCC insiders hold a not-so-significant 3.48% stake in the company, which somewhat aligns their interests with that of shareholders. However, a higher level of insider ownership has been linked to management executing on high-returning projects instead of expansion projects for the sake of apparent growth. In addition to this, it may be interesting to look at insider buying and selling activities. Keep in mind that buying may be sign of upbeat future expectations, but selling doesn’t necessarily mean the opposite as the insiders might just be doing it out of their personal financial needs.
General Public Ownership
A big stake of 23.21% in HWCC is held by the general public. This size of ownership gives retail investors collective power in deciding on major policy decisions such as executive compensation, appointment of directors and acquisitions of businesses.
Next Steps:
I suggest investors seek some degree of margin of safety due to high institutional ownership in HWCC, in particular due to the strong presence of active hedge fund investors. This is to avoid getting trapped in a sustained sell-off that is often observed in stocks with this level of institutional participation. However, if you are building an investment case for HWCC, ownership structure alone should not dictate your decision to buy or sell the stock. Rather, you should be examining fundamental factors such as Houston Wire & Cable’s past track record and financial health. I urge you to complete your research by taking a look at the following:
Financial Health: Are HWCC’s operations financially sustainable? Balance sheets can be hard to analyze, which is why we’ve done it for you. Check out our financial health checks here.
Past Track Record: Has HWCC 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 HWCC’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 past 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. For errors that warrant correction please contact the editor at editorial-team@simplywallst.com.
