Key Insights

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

• The top 15 shareholders own 50% of the company

• Ownership research along with analyst forecasts data help provide a good understanding of opportunities in a stock

A look at the shareholders of Symrise AG (ETR:SY1) can tell us which group is most powerful. And the group that holds the biggest piece of the pie are institutions with 63% ownership. Put another way, the group faces the maximum upside potential (or downside risk).

Since institutional have access to huge amounts of capital, their market moves tend to receive a lot of scrutiny by retail or individual investors. As a result, a sizeable amount of institutional money invested in a firm is generally viewed as a positive attribute.

Let's delve deeper into each type of owner of Symrise, beginning with the chart below.

Check out our latest analysis for Symrise

What Does The Institutional Ownership Tell Us About Symrise?

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 Symrise. 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 Symrise, (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. Symrise is not owned by hedge funds. Looking at our data, we can see that the largest shareholder is Massachusetts Financial Services Company with 9.7% of shares outstanding. BlackRock, Inc. is the second largest shareholder owning 6.1% of common stock, and Norges Bank Investment Management holds about 5.1% of the company stock.

Looking at the shareholder registry, we can see that 50% of the ownership is controlled by the top 15 shareholders, meaning that no single shareholder has a majority interest in the ownership.

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