Key Insights

• Significant control over Gravity by public companies implies that the general public has more power to influence management and governance-related decisions

• The largest shareholder of the company is GungHo Online Entertainment, Inc. with a 59% stake

• Ownership research, combined with past performance data can help provide a good understanding of opportunities in a stock

If you want to know who really controls Gravity Co., Ltd. (NASDAQ:GRVY), then you'll have to look at the makeup of its share registry. We can see that public companies own the lion's share in the company with 59% ownership. Put another way, the group faces the maximum upside potential (or downside risk).

Meanwhile, individual investors make up 31% of the company’s shareholders.

In the chart below, we zoom in on the different ownership groups of Gravity.

See our latest analysis for Gravity

What Does The Institutional Ownership Tell Us About Gravity?

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.

We can see that Gravity does have institutional investors; and they hold a good portion of the company's stock. This can indicate that the company has a certain degree of credibility in the investment community. However, it is best to be wary of relying on the supposed validation that comes with institutional investors. They too, get it wrong sometimes. It is not uncommon to see a big share price drop if two large institutional investors try to sell out of a stock at the same time. So it is worth checking the past earnings trajectory of Gravity, (below). Of course, keep in mind that there are other factors to consider, too.

We note that hedge funds don't have a meaningful investment in Gravity. GungHo Online Entertainment, Inc. is currently the largest shareholder, with 59% of shares outstanding. With such a huge stake in the ownership, we infer that they have significant control of the future of the company. With 2.7% and 2.3% of the shares outstanding respectively, Morgan Stanley, Investment Banking and Brokerage Investments and Acadian Asset Management LLC are the second and third largest shareholders.

While it makes sense to study institutional ownership data for a company, it also makes sense to study analyst sentiments to know which way the wind is blowing. We're not picking up on any analyst coverage of the stock at the moment, so the company is unlikely to be widely held.

Insider Ownership Of Gravity

While the precise definition of an insider can be subjective, almost everyone considers board members to be insiders. The company management answer to the board and the latter should represent the interests of shareholders. Notably, sometimes top-level managers are on the board themselves.