If you want to know who really controls Bank of Hawaii Corporation (NYSE:BOH), then you'll have to look at the makeup of its share registry. With 79% stake, institutions possess the maximum shares in the company. Put another way, the group faces the maximum upside potential (or downside risk).
Last week’s 5.5% gain means that institutional investors were on the positive end of the spectrum even as the company has shown strong longer-term trends. One-year return to shareholders is currently 17% and last week’s gain was the icing on the cake.
In the chart below, we zoom in on the different ownership groups of Bank of Hawaii.
What Does The Institutional Ownership Tell Us About Bank of Hawaii?
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.
We can see that Bank of Hawaii does have institutional investors; and they hold a good portion of the company's stock. 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. 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 Bank of Hawaii's earnings history below. Of course, the future is what really matters.
NYSE:BOH Earnings and Revenue Growth April 16th 2025
Since institutional investors own more than half the issued stock, the board will likely have to pay attention to their preferences. Hedge funds don't have many shares in Bank of Hawaii. BlackRock, Inc. is currently the company's largest shareholder with 15% of shares outstanding. For context, the second largest shareholder holds about 12% of the shares outstanding, followed by an ownership of 6.2% by the third-largest shareholder. Additionally, the company's CEO Peter Ho directly holds 0.7% of the total shares outstanding.
We did some more digging and found that 10 of the top shareholders account for roughly 50% of the register, implying that along with larger shareholders, there are a few smaller shareholders, thereby balancing out each others interests somewhat.
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 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 Bank of Hawaii
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.
I generally consider insider ownership to be a good thing. However, on some occasions it makes it more difficult for other shareholders to hold the board accountable for decisions.
Shareholders would probably be interested to learn that insiders own shares in Bank of Hawaii Corporation. It is a pretty big company, so it is generally a positive to see some potentially meaningful alignment. In this case, they own around US$57m worth of shares (at current prices). It is good to see this level of investment by insiders. You can check here to see if those insiders have been buying recently.
General Public Ownership
The general public, who are usually individual investors, hold a 19% stake in Bank of Hawaii. While this size of ownership may not be enough to sway a policy decision in their favour, they can still make a collective impact on company policies.
Next Steps:
It's always worth thinking about the different groups who own shares in a company. But to understand Bank of Hawaii better, we need to consider many other factors.
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.
