Key Insights

• Institutions' substantial holdings in Liquidia implies that they have significant influence over the company's share price
• A total of 14 investors have a majority stake in the company with 52% ownership
• 11% of Liquidia is held by insiders

We check all companies for important risks. See what we found for Liquidia in our free report.

A look at the shareholders of Liquidia Corporation (NASDAQ:LQDA) can tell us which group is most powerful. The group holding the most number of shares in the company, around 51% to be precise, is institutions. Put another way, the group faces the maximum upside potential (or downside risk).

Institutional investors would probably welcome last week's 8.4% increase in the share price after a year of 1.5% losses as a sign that returns may to begin trending higher.

Let's delve deeper into each type of owner of Liquidia, beginning with the chart below.

Check out our latest analysis for Liquidia

What Does The Institutional Ownership Tell Us About Liquidia?

Institutions typically measure themselves against a benchmark when reporting to their own investors, so they often become more enthusiastic about a stock once it's included in a major index. We would expect most companies to have some institutions on the register, especially if they are growing.

We can see that Liquidia does have institutional investors; and they hold a good portion of the company's stock. This suggests some credibility amongst professional investors. But we can't rely on that fact alone since institutions make bad investments sometimes, just like everyone does. If multiple institutions change their view on a stock at the same time, you could see the share price drop fast. It's therefore worth looking at Liquidia's earnings history below. Of course, the future is what really matters.

Institutional investors own over 50% of the company, so together than can probably strongly influence board decisions. Our data indicates that hedge funds own 9.5% of Liquidia. That worth noting, since hedge funds are often quite active investors, who may try to influence management. Many want to see value creation (and a higher share price) in the short term or medium term. Caligan Partners, LP is currently the largest shareholder, with 9.5% of shares outstanding. With 7.2% and 5.5% of the shares outstanding respectively, Paul Manning and BlackRock, Inc. are the second and third largest shareholders. In addition, we found that Roger Jeffs, the CEO has 2.4% of the shares allocated to their name.

Looking at the shareholder registry, we can see that 52% of the ownership is controlled by the top 14 shareholders, meaning that no single shareholder has a majority interest in the ownership.

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 are plenty of analysts covering the stock, so it might be worth seeing what they are forecasting, too.

Insider Ownership Of Liquidia

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.

It seems insiders own a significant proportion of Liquidia Corporation. It has a market capitalization of just US$1.1b, and insiders have US$123m worth of shares in their own names. That's quite significant. Most would say this shows a good degree of alignment with shareholders, especially in a company of this size. You can click here to see if those insiders have been buying or selling.

General Public Ownership

The general public-- including retail investors -- own 26% stake in the company, and hence can't easily be ignored. While this group can't necessarily call the shots, it can certainly have a real influence on how the company is run.

Next Steps:

While it is well worth considering the different groups that own a company, there are other factors that are even more important.

I like to dive deeper into how a company has performed in the past. You can access this interactive graph of past earnings, revenue and cash flow, for free.

Ultimately the future is most important. You can access this free report on analyst forecasts for the company.

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.