Could The CSX Corporation (NASDAQ:CSX) Ownership Structure Tell Us Something Useful?

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If you want to know who really controls CSX Corporation (NASDAQ:CSX), then you'll have to look at the makeup of its share registry. Generally speaking, as a company grows, institutions will increase their ownership. Conversely, insiders often decrease their ownership over time. Companies that have been privatized tend to have low insider ownership.

CSX has a market capitalization of US$73b, so it's too big to fly under the radar. We'd expect to see both institutions and retail investors owning a portion of the company. In the chart below, we can see that institutions own shares in the company. We can zoom in on the different ownership groups, to learn more about CSX.

See our latest analysis for CSX

ownership-breakdown
NasdaqGS:CSX Ownership Breakdown August 8th 2021

What Does The Institutional Ownership Tell Us About CSX?

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.

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

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NasdaqGS:CSX Earnings and Revenue Growth August 8th 2021

Investors should note that institutions actually own more than half the company, so they can collectively wield significant power. Hedge funds don't have many shares in CSX. Capital Research and Management Company is currently the largest shareholder, with 17% of shares outstanding. Meanwhile, the second and third largest shareholders, hold 8.3% and 6.5%, of the shares outstanding, respectively.

After doing some more digging, we found that the top 19 have the combined ownership of 50% 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.

Insider Ownership Of CSX

The definition of company insiders can be subjective and does vary between jurisdictions. Our data reflects individual insiders, capturing board members at the very least. Company management run the business, but the CEO will answer to the board, even if he or she is a member of it.