Key Insights

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

• A total of 5 investors have a majority stake in the company with 52% ownership

• Insiders have sold recently

To get a sense of who is truly in control of Safety Insurance Group, Inc. (NASDAQ:SAFT), it is important to understand the ownership structure of the business. And the group that holds the biggest piece of the pie are institutions with 83% ownership. Put another way, the group faces the maximum upside potential (or downside risk).

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. Therefore, a good portion of institutional money invested in the company is usually a huge vote of confidence on its future.

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

See our latest analysis for Safety Insurance Group

What Does The Institutional Ownership Tell Us About Safety Insurance Group?

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.

We can see that Safety Insurance Group 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. If multiple institutions change their view on a stock at the same time, you could see the share price drop fast. It's therefore worth looking at Safety Insurance Group's earnings history below. Of course, the future is what really matters.

Investors should note that institutions actually own more than half the company, so they can collectively wield significant power. Safety Insurance Group is not owned by hedge funds. The company's largest shareholder is BlackRock, Inc., with ownership of 15%. Meanwhile, the second and third largest shareholders, hold 12% and 11%, of the shares outstanding, respectively. In addition, we found that George Murphy, the CEO has 0.7% of the shares allocated to their name.

Our research also brought to light the fact that roughly 52% of the company is controlled by the top 5 shareholders suggesting that these owners wield significant influence on the business.

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. We're not picking up on any analyst coverage of the stock at the moment, so the company is unlikely to be widely held.