Key Insights

• Given the large stake in the stock by institutions, Nicolet Bankshares' stock price might be vulnerable to their trading decisions

• A total of 25 investors have a majority stake in the company with 49% ownership

• Insiders have sold recently

A look at the shareholders of Nicolet Bankshares, Inc. (NYSE:NIC) can tell us which group is most powerful. The group holding the most number of shares in the company, around 46% to be precise, is institutions. 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. Hence, having a considerable amount of institutional money invested in a company is often regarded as a desirable trait.

In the chart below, we zoom in on the different ownership groups of Nicolet Bankshares.

View our latest analysis for Nicolet Bankshares

What Does The Institutional Ownership Tell Us About Nicolet Bankshares?

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 Nicolet Bankshares. 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. When multiple institutions own a stock, there's always a risk that they are in a 'crowded trade'. When such a trade goes wrong, multiple parties may compete to sell stock fast. This risk is higher in a company without a history of growth. You can see Nicolet Bankshares' historic earnings and revenue below, but keep in mind there's always more to the story.

Nicolet Bankshares is not owned by hedge funds. Our data shows that BlackRock, Inc. is the largest shareholder with 6.8% of shares outstanding. With 5.9% and 4.8% of the shares outstanding respectively, Nicolet Bankshares Inc, Asset Management Arm and The Vanguard Group, Inc. are the second and third largest shareholders. Additionally, the company's CEO Michael Daniels directly holds 0.6% of the total shares outstanding.

Our studies suggest that the top 25 shareholders collectively control less than half of the company's shares, meaning that the company's shares are widely disseminated and there is no dominant shareholder.

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. There are a reasonable number of analysts covering the stock, so it might be useful to find out their aggregate view on the future.