If you want to know who really controls Bayerische Motoren Werke Aktiengesellschaft (ETR:BMW), then you'll have to look at the makeup of its share registry. We can see that individual investors own the lion's share in the company with 36% ownership. Put another way, the group faces the maximum upside potential (or downside risk).
Meanwhile, individual insiders make up 35% of the company’s shareholders. Institutions will often hold stock in bigger companies, and we expect to see insiders owning a noticeable percentage of the smaller ones.
Let's take a closer look to see what the different types of shareholders can tell us about Bayerische Motoren Werke.
Check out our latest analysis for Bayerische Motoren Werke
What Does The Institutional Ownership Tell Us About Bayerische Motoren Werke?
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.
Bayerische Motoren Werke 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. 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 Bayerische Motoren Werke's historic earnings and revenue below, but keep in mind there's always more to the story.
Bayerische Motoren Werke is not owned by hedge funds. Looking at our data, we can see that the largest shareholder is Susanne Klatten with 19% of shares outstanding. For context, the second largest shareholder holds about 16% of the shares outstanding, followed by an ownership of 8.4% by the third-largest shareholder.
On further inspection, we found that more than half the company's shares are owned by the top 8 shareholders, suggesting that the interests of the larger shareholders are balanced out to an extent by the smaller ones.
Researching institutional ownership is a good way to gauge and filter a stock's expected performance. The same can be achieved by studying analyst sentiments. There are plenty of analysts covering the stock, so it might be worth seeing what they are forecasting, too.
Insider Ownership Of Bayerische Motoren Werke
While the precise definition of an insider can be subjective, almost everyone considers board members to be insiders. Management ultimately answers to the board. However, it is not uncommon for managers to be executive board members, especially if they are a founder or the CEO.