A look at the shareholders of Cullen/Frost Bankers, Inc. (NYSE:CFR) can tell us which group is most powerful. And the group that holds the biggest piece of the pie are institutions with 82% ownership. Put another way, the group faces the maximum upside potential (or downside risk).

Last week’s 7.6% gain means that institutional investors were on the positive end of the spectrum even as the company has shown strong longer-term trends. The one-year return on investment is currently 30% and last week's gain would have been more than welcomed.

Let's take a closer look to see what the different types of shareholders can tell us about Cullen/Frost Bankers.

View our latest analysis for Cullen/Frost Bankers

What Does The Institutional Ownership Tell Us About Cullen/Frost Bankers?

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.

As you can see, institutional investors have a fair amount of stake in Cullen/Frost Bankers. This implies the analysts working for those institutions have looked at the stock and they like it. But just like anyone else, they could be wrong. When multiple institutions own a stock, there's always a risk that they are in a 'crowded trade'. When such a trade goes wrong, multiple parties may compete to sell stock fast. This risk is higher in a company without a history of growth. You can see Cullen/Frost Bankers' historic earnings and revenue below, but keep in mind there's always more to the story.

Institutional investors own over 50% of the company, so together than can probably strongly influence board decisions. We note that hedge funds don't have a meaningful investment in Cullen/Frost Bankers. Aristotle Capital Management, LLC is currently the largest shareholder, with 11% of shares outstanding. The Vanguard Group, Inc. is the second largest shareholder owning 9.4% of common stock, and BlackRock, Inc. holds about 7.9% of the company stock.

We also observed that the top 9 shareholders account for more than half of the share register, with a few smaller shareholders to balance the interests of the larger ones to a certain extent.

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 a reasonable number of analysts covering the stock, so it might be useful to find out their aggregate view on the future.

Insider Ownership Of Cullen/Frost Bankers

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.