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Key Insights

• Significantly high institutional ownership implies First Busey's stock price is sensitive to their trading actions

• A total of 23 investors have a majority stake in the company with 51% ownership

• Insiders have bought recently

A look at the shareholders of First Busey Corporation (NASDAQ:BUSE) can tell us which group is most powerful. And the group that holds the biggest piece of the pie are institutions with 58% ownership. In other words, the group stands to gain the most (or lose the most) from their investment into the company.

Because institutional owners have a huge pool of resources and liquidity, their investing decisions tend to carry a great deal of weight, especially with individual investors. Hence, having a considerable amount of institutional money invested in a company is often regarded as a desirable trait.

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

See our latest analysis for First Busey

What Does The Institutional Ownership Tell Us About First Busey?

Institutional investors commonly compare their own returns to the returns of a commonly followed index. So they generally do consider buying larger companies that are included in the relevant benchmark index.

First Busey already has institutions on the share registry. Indeed, they own a respectable stake in the company. 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. 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 First Busey, (below). Of course, keep in mind that there are other factors to consider, too.

Institutional investors own over 50% of the company, so together than can probably strongly influence board decisions. First Busey is not owned by hedge funds. BlackRock, Inc. is currently the largest shareholder, with 8.4% of shares outstanding. In comparison, the second and third largest shareholders hold about 5.8% and 5.3% of the stock.

After doing some more digging, we found that the top 23 have the combined ownership of 51% in the company, suggesting that no single shareholder has significant control over the company.

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