Key Insights

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

• A total of 25 investors have a majority stake in the company with 50% ownership

• Insiders have been buying lately

If you want to know who really controls Consolidated Edison, Inc. (NYSE:ED), 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 70% ownership. In other words, the group stands to gain the most (or lose the most) from their investment into the company.

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. 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 Consolidated Edison.

See our latest analysis for Consolidated Edison

What Does The Institutional Ownership Tell Us About Consolidated Edison?

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.

Consolidated Edison already has institutions on the share registry. Indeed, they own a respectable stake in the company. 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 Consolidated Edison's historic earnings and revenue below, but keep in mind there's always more to the story.

Institutional investors own over 50% of the company, so together than can probably strongly influence board decisions. Consolidated Edison is not owned by hedge funds. Our data shows that The Vanguard Group, Inc. is the largest shareholder with 12% of shares outstanding. Meanwhile, the second and third largest shareholders, hold 12% and 6.7%, of the shares outstanding, respectively.

Looking at the shareholder registry, we can see that 50% of the ownership is controlled by the top 25 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. There are plenty of analysts covering the stock, so it might be worth seeing what they are forecasting, too.