Every investor in Algonquin Power & Utilities Corp. (TSE:AQN) should be aware of the most powerful shareholder groups. Generally speaking, as a company grows, institutions will increase their ownership. Conversely, insiders often decrease their ownership over time. We also tend to see lower insider ownership in companies that were previously publicly owned.

Algonquin Power & Utilities has a market capitalization of CA$11b, 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. Taking a look at our data on the ownership groups (below), it seems that institutional investors have bought into the company. We can zoom in on the different ownership groups, to learn more about Algonquin Power & Utilities.

View our latest analysis for Algonquin Power & Utilities

What Does The Institutional Ownership Tell Us About Algonquin Power & Utilities?

Institutions typically measure themselves against a benchmark when reporting to their own investors, so they often become more enthusiastic about a stock once it's included in a major index. We would expect most companies to have some institutions on the register, especially if they are growing.

We can see that Algonquin Power & Utilities 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 Algonquin Power & Utilities, (below). Of course, keep in mind that there are other factors to consider, too.

Hedge funds don't have many shares in Algonquin Power & Utilities. BMO Global Asset Management is currently the company's largest shareholder with 7.0% of shares outstanding. With 2.8% and 2.6% of the shares outstanding respectively, RBC Dominion Securities Inc., Asset Management Arm and The Vanguard Group, Inc. are the second and third largest shareholders.

A deeper look at our ownership data shows that the top 25 shareholders collectively hold less than half of the register, suggesting a large group of small holders where no single shareholder has a majority.

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.