If you want to know who really controls Hill-Rom Holdings, Inc. (NYSE:HRC), then you'll have to look at the makeup of its share registry. Insiders often own a large chunk of younger, smaller, companies while huge companies tend to have institutions as shareholders. We also tend to see lower insider ownership in companies that were previously publicly owned.
With a market capitalization of US$6.6b, Hill-Rom Holdings is rather large. We'd expect to see institutional investors on the register. Companies of this size are usually well known to retail investors, too. Taking a look at our data on the ownership groups (below), it seems that institutional investors have bought into the company. Let's take a closer look to see what the different types of shareholders can tell us about Hill-Rom Holdings.
See our latest analysis for Hill-Rom Holdings
What Does The Institutional Ownership Tell Us About Hill-Rom Holdings?
Many institutions measure their performance against an index that approximates the local market. So they usually pay more attention to companies that are included in major indices.
As you can see, institutional investors have a fair amount of stake in Hill-Rom Holdings. This suggests some credibility amongst professional investors. But we can't rely on that fact alone since institutions make bad investments sometimes, just like everyone does. 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 Hill-Rom Holdings, (below). Of course, keep in mind that there are other factors to consider, too.
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 Hill-Rom Holdings. Looking at our data, we can see that the largest shareholder is Wellington Management Group LLP with 10% of shares outstanding. With 9.2% and 9.0% of the shares outstanding respectively, BlackRock, Inc. and The Vanguard Group, Inc. are the second and third largest shareholders.
A closer look at our ownership figures suggests that the top 14 shareholders have a combined ownership of 51% implying that no single shareholder has a majority.
While studying institutional ownership for a company can add value to your research, it is also a good practice to research analyst recommendations to get a deeper understand of a stock's expected performance. There are plenty of analysts covering the stock, so it might be worth seeing what they are forecasting, too.