The big shareholder groups in Foot Locker, Inc. (NYSE:FL) have power over the company. Institutions often own shares in more established companies, while it's not unusual to see insiders own a fair bit of smaller companies. Companies that have been privatized tend to have low insider ownership.

Foot Locker has a market capitalization of US$2.4b, so we would expect some institutional investors to have noticed the stock. In the chart below, we can see that institutions are noticeable on the share registry. Let's delve deeper into each type of owner, to discover more about Foot Locker.

Check out our latest analysis for Foot Locker

What Does The Institutional Ownership Tell Us About Foot Locker?

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.

Foot Locker already has institutions on the share registry. Indeed, they own a respectable stake in the company. 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 Foot Locker, (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. Foot Locker is not owned by hedge funds. The company's largest shareholder is The Vanguard Group, Inc., with ownership of 11%. Meanwhile, the second and third largest shareholders, hold 11% and 8.6%, of the shares outstanding, respectively.

Looking at the shareholder registry, we can see that 50% of the ownership is controlled by the top 13 shareholders, meaning that no single shareholder has a majority interest in the ownership.

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. Quite a few analysts cover the stock, so you could look into forecast growth quite easily.

Insider Ownership Of Foot Locker

While the precise definition of an insider can be subjective, almost everyone considers board members to be insiders. The company management answer to the board and the latter should represent the interests of shareholders. Notably, sometimes top-level managers are on the board themselves.