Key Insights

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

• 50% of the business is held by the top 13 shareholders

• Insiders own 23% of Macatawa Bank

If you want to know who really controls Macatawa Bank Corporation (NASDAQ:MCBC), then you'll have to look at the makeup of its share registry. And the group that holds the biggest piece of the pie are institutions with 42% 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. Hence, having a considerable amount of institutional money invested in a company is often regarded as a desirable trait.

Let's take a closer look to see what the different types of shareholders can tell us about Macatawa Bank.

View our latest analysis for Macatawa Bank

What Does The Institutional Ownership Tell Us About Macatawa Bank?

Institutional investors commonly compare their own returns to the returns of a commonly followed index. So they generally do consider buying larger companies that are included in the relevant benchmark index.

As you can see, institutional investors have a fair amount of stake in Macatawa Bank. This can indicate that the company has a certain degree of credibility in the investment community. However, it is best to be wary of relying on the supposed validation that comes with institutional investors. They too, get it wrong sometimes. 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 Macatawa Bank, (below). Of course, keep in mind that there are other factors to consider, too.

We note that hedge funds don't have a meaningful investment in Macatawa Bank. The company's largest shareholder is Stephen Van Andel, with ownership of 16%. The second and third largest shareholders are Richard Postma and BlackRock, Inc., with an equal amount of shares to their name at 4.5%. In addition, we found that Ronald Haan, the CEO has 0.9% of the shares allocated to their name.

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.