Past performance of a company along with ownership data serve to give a strong idea about prospects for a business

A look at the shareholders of Sunmow Holding Berhad (KLSE:SUNMOW) can tell us which group is most powerful. With 76% stake, individual insiders possess the maximum shares in the company. That is, the group stands to benefit the most if the stock rises (or lose the most if there is a downturn).

Clearly, insiders benefitted the most after the company's market cap rose by RM82m last week.

Let's take a closer look to see what the different types of shareholders can tell us about Sunmow Holding Berhad.

See our latest analysis for Sunmow Holding Berhad

Small companies that are not very actively traded often lack institutional investors, but it's less common to see large companies without them.

There are many reasons why a company might not have any institutions on the share registry. It may be hard for institutions to buy large amounts of shares, if liquidity (the amount of shares traded each day) is low. If the company has not needed to raise capital, institutions might lack the opportunity to build a position. It is also possible that fund managers don't own the stock because they aren't convinced it will perform well. Sunmow Holding Berhad's earnings and revenue track record (below) may not be compelling to institutional investors -- or they simply might not have looked at the business closely.

Sunmow Holding Berhad is not owned by hedge funds. Chiong Miew Kong is currently the company's largest shareholder with 44% of shares outstanding. In comparison, the second and third largest shareholders hold about 29% and 8.1% of the stock.

After doing some more digging, we found that the top 2 shareholders collectively control more than half of the company's shares, implying that they have considerable power to influence the company's decisions.

While studying institutional ownership for a company can add value to your research, it is also a good practice to research analyst recommendations to get a deeper understand of a stock's expected performance. We're not picking up on any analyst coverage of the stock at the moment, so the company is unlikely to be widely held.

While the precise definition of an insider can be subjective, almost everyone considers board members to be insiders. Management ultimately answers to the board. However, it is not uncommon for managers to be executive board members, especially if they are a founder or the CEO.