Key Insights

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

• 51% of the business is held by the top 15 shareholders

• Recent purchases by insiders

If you want to know who really controls First Financial Corporation (NASDAQ:THFF), then you'll have to look at the makeup of its share registry. With 73% stake, institutions possess the maximum shares in the company. That is, the group stands to benefit the most if the stock rises (or lose the most if there is a downturn).

Because institutional owners have a huge pool of resources and liquidity, their investing decisions tend to carry a great deal 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.

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

See our latest analysis for First Financial

What Does The Institutional Ownership Tell Us About First Financial?

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.

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

Institutional investors own over 50% of the company, so together than can probably strongly influence board decisions. We note that hedge funds don't have a meaningful investment in First Financial. Looking at our data, we can see that the largest shareholder is BlackRock, Inc. with 10% of shares outstanding. In comparison, the second and third largest shareholders hold about 6.4% and 6.3% of the stock.

After doing some more digging, we found that the top 15 have the combined ownership of 51% in the company, suggesting that no single shareholder has significant control over the company.

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. There are plenty of analysts covering the stock, so it might be worth seeing what they are forecasting, too.