Key Insights

• Given the large stake in the stock by institutions, St. Joe's stock price might be vulnerable to their trading decisions

• The top 3 shareholders own 58% of the company

• Past performance of a company along with ownership data serve to give a strong idea about prospects for a business

A look at the shareholders of The St. Joe Company (NYSE:JOE) can tell us which group is most powerful. And the group that holds the biggest piece of the pie are institutions with 87% ownership. Put another way, the group faces the maximum upside potential (or downside risk).

Given the vast amount of money and research capacities at their disposal, institutional ownership tends to carry a lot of weight, especially with individual investors. Therefore, a good portion of institutional money invested in the company is usually a huge vote of confidence on its future.

In the chart below, we zoom in on the different ownership groups of St. Joe.

See our latest analysis for St. Joe

What Does The Institutional Ownership Tell Us About St. Joe?

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.

As you can see, institutional investors have a fair amount of stake in St. Joe. 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. 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 St. Joe, (below). Of course, keep in mind that there are other factors to consider, too.

Since institutional investors own more than half the issued stock, the board will likely have to pay attention to their preferences. St. Joe is not owned by hedge funds. The company's largest shareholder is Fairholme Capital Management, L.L.C., with ownership of 39%. The second and third largest shareholders are BlackRock, Inc. and The Vanguard Group, Inc., with an equal amount of shares to their name at 9.8%.

To make our study more interesting, we found that the top 3 shareholders have a majority ownership in the company, meaning that they are powerful enough to influence the decisions of the company.

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. Our information suggests that there isn't any analyst coverage of the stock, so it is probably little known.