Key Insights

• Significantly high institutional ownership implies Enterprise Financial Services' stock price is sensitive to their trading actions

• A total of 12 investors have a majority stake in the company with 50% ownership

• Recent sales by insiders

To get a sense of who is truly in control of Enterprise Financial Services Corp (NASDAQ:EFSC), 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 76% 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. Hence, having a considerable amount of institutional money invested in a company is often regarded as a desirable trait.

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

See our latest analysis for Enterprise Financial Services

What Does The Institutional Ownership Tell Us About Enterprise Financial Services?

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.

Enterprise Financial Services already has institutions on the share registry. Indeed, they own a respectable stake in the company. This suggests some credibility amongst professional investors. But we can't rely on that fact alone since institutions make bad investments sometimes, just like everyone does. 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 Enterprise Financial Services' 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. Enterprise Financial Services is not owned by hedge funds. BlackRock, Inc. is currently the largest shareholder, with 10% of shares outstanding. Meanwhile, the second and third largest shareholders, hold 8.1% and 5.6%, of the shares outstanding, respectively.

A closer look at our ownership figures suggests that the top 12 shareholders have a combined ownership of 50% implying that no single shareholder has a majority.

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 a reasonable number of analysts covering the stock, so it might be useful to find out their aggregate view on the future.