In This Article:
Key Insights
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Significantly high institutional ownership implies Pfizer's stock price is sensitive to their trading actions
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43% of the business is held by the top 25 shareholders
Every investor in Pfizer Inc. (NYSE:PFE) should be aware of the most powerful shareholder groups. We can see that institutions own the lion's share in the company with 68% 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. As a result, a sizeable amount of institutional money invested in a firm is generally viewed as a positive attribute.
Let's delve deeper into each type of owner of Pfizer, beginning with the chart below.
View our latest analysis for Pfizer
What Does The Institutional Ownership Tell Us About Pfizer?
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 Pfizer. 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 Pfizer's historic earnings and revenue below, but keep in mind there's always more to the story.
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 Pfizer. The Vanguard Group, Inc. is currently the company's largest shareholder with 9.1% of shares outstanding. BlackRock, Inc. is the second largest shareholder owning 7.7% of common stock, and State Street Global Advisors, Inc. holds about 5.1% of the company stock.
On studying our ownership data, we found that 25 of the top shareholders collectively own less than 50% of the share register, implying that no single individual has a majority interest.
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.