Key Insights

• Significantly high institutional ownership implies Bank of Hawaii's stock price is sensitive to their trading actions

• A total of 8 investors have a majority stake in the company with 51% ownership

• Analyst forecasts along with ownership data serve to give a strong idea about prospects for a business

A look at the shareholders of Bank of Hawaii Corporation (NYSE:BOH) can tell us which group is most powerful. And the group that holds the biggest piece of the pie are institutions with 85% ownership. That is, the group stands to benefit the most if the stock rises (or lose the most if there is a downturn).

No shareholder likes losing money on their investments, especially institutional investors who saw their holdings drop 4.7% in value last week. Still, the 23% one-year gains may have helped mitigate their overall losses. They should, however, be mindful of further losses in the future.

Let's delve deeper into each type of owner of Bank of Hawaii, beginning with the chart below.

View our latest analysis for Bank of Hawaii

What Does The Institutional Ownership Tell Us About Bank of Hawaii?

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 Bank of Hawaii does have institutional investors; and they hold a good portion of the company's stock. 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. If multiple institutions change their view on a stock at the same time, you could see the share price drop fast. It's therefore worth looking at Bank of Hawaii's earnings history below. Of course, the future is what really matters.

Since institutional investors own more than half the issued stock, the board will likely have to pay attention to their preferences. Bank of Hawaii is not owned by hedge funds. The company's largest shareholder is BlackRock, Inc., with ownership of 14%. In comparison, the second and third largest shareholders hold about 12% and 5.9% of the stock.

We also observed that the top 8 shareholders account for more than half of the share register, with a few smaller shareholders to balance the interests of the larger ones to a certain extent.

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