Fairfax Financial Holdings Limited's (TSE:FFH) largest shareholders are individual investors with 60% ownership, institutions own 29%
In This Article:
Key Insights
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The considerable ownership by individual investors in Fairfax Financial Holdings indicates that they collectively have a greater say in management and business strategy
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The top 25 shareholders own 35% of the company
Every investor in Fairfax Financial Holdings Limited (TSE:FFH) should be aware of the most powerful shareholder groups. The group holding the most number of shares in the company, around 60% to be precise, is individual investors. Put another way, the group faces the maximum upside potential (or downside risk).
And institutions on the other hand have a 29% ownership in the company. Generally speaking, as a company grows, institutions will increase their ownership. Conversely, insiders often decrease their ownership over time.
Let's delve deeper into each type of owner of Fairfax Financial Holdings, beginning with the chart below.
Check out our latest analysis for Fairfax Financial Holdings
What Does The Institutional Ownership Tell Us About Fairfax Financial Holdings?
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.
Fairfax Financial Holdings 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. 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 Fairfax Financial Holdings' earnings history below. Of course, the future is what really matters.
Fairfax Financial Holdings is not owned by hedge funds. Looking at our data, we can see that the largest shareholder is the CEO V. Watsa with 9.4% of shares outstanding. The second and third largest shareholders are EdgePoint Investment Group Inc. and The Bank of Nova Scotia, Banking Investments, with an equal amount of shares to their name at 3.9%.
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.
While it makes sense to study institutional ownership data for a company, it also makes sense to study analyst sentiments to know which way the wind is blowing. There are a reasonable number of analysts covering the stock, so it might be useful to find out their aggregate view on the future.