Key Insights

• Significant control over McEwen Mining by individual investors implies that the general public has more power to influence management and governance-related decisions

• A total of 25 investors have a majority stake in the company with 39% ownership

• 16% of McEwen Mining is held by insiders

To get a sense of who is truly in control of McEwen Mining Inc. (NYSE:MUX), it is important to understand the ownership structure of the business. The group holding the most number of shares in the company, around 55% to be precise, is individual investors. Put another way, the group faces the maximum upside potential (or downside risk).

Institutions, on the other hand, account for 28% of the company's stockholders. Institutions will often hold stock in bigger companies, and we expect to see insiders owning a noticeable percentage of the smaller ones.

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

See our latest analysis for McEwen Mining

What Does The Institutional Ownership Tell Us About McEwen Mining?

Institutions typically measure themselves against a benchmark when reporting to their own investors, so they often become more enthusiastic about a stock once it's included in a major index. We would expect most companies to have some institutions on the register, especially if they are growing.

McEwen Mining 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. 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 McEwen Mining, (below). Of course, keep in mind that there are other factors to consider, too.

We note that hedge funds don't have a meaningful investment in McEwen Mining. The company's CEO Robert McEwen is the largest shareholder with 16% of shares outstanding. For context, the second largest shareholder holds about 4.1% of the shares outstanding, followed by an ownership of 2.6% by the third-largest shareholder.

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. Quite a few analysts cover the stock, so you could look into forecast growth quite easily.