Key Insights

• Institutions' substantial holdings in Unitil implies that they have significant influence over the company's share price

• The top 12 shareholders own 51% of the company

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

A look at the shareholders of Unitil Corporation (NYSE:UTL) can tell us which group is most powerful. We can see that institutions own the lion's share in the company with 76% ownership. In other words, the group stands to gain the most (or lose the most) from their investment into the company.

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. As a result, a sizeable amount of institutional money invested in a firm is generally viewed as a positive attribute.

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

View our latest analysis for Unitil

What Does The Institutional Ownership Tell Us About Unitil?

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.

We can see that Unitil 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. 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 Unitil, (below). Of course, keep in mind that there are other factors to consider, too.

Investors should note that institutions actually own more than half the company, so they can collectively wield significant power. Unitil is not owned by hedge funds. BlackRock, Inc. is currently the company's largest shareholder with 18% of shares outstanding. Meanwhile, the second and third largest shareholders, hold 7.7% and 3.8%, of the shares outstanding, respectively. Additionally, the company's CEO Thomas Meissner directly holds 0.7% of the total shares outstanding.

A closer look at our ownership figures suggests that the top 12 shareholders have a combined ownership of 51% implying that no single shareholder has a majority.

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