Key Insights

• Significantly high institutional ownership implies HF Sinclair's stock price is sensitive to their trading actions
• 50% of the business is held by the top 9 shareholders
• Analyst forecasts along with ownership data serve to give a strong idea about prospects for a business

If you want to know who really controls HF Sinclair Corporation (NYSE:DINO), 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 81% ownership. Put another way, the group faces the maximum upside potential (or downside risk).

And institutional investors saw their holdings value drop by 7.4% last week. This set of investors may especially be concerned about the current loss, which adds to a one-year loss of 24% for shareholders. Also referred to as "smart money", institutions have a lot of sway over how a stock's price moves. Hence, if weakness in HF Sinclair's share price continues, institutional investors may feel compelled to sell the stock, which might not be ideal for individual investors.

In the chart below, we zoom in on the different ownership groups of HF Sinclair.

What Does The Institutional Ownership Tell Us About HF Sinclair?

Many institutions measure their performance against an index that approximates the local market. So they usually pay more attention to companies that are included in major indices.

HF Sinclair 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 HF Sinclair'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. Hedge funds don't have many shares in HF Sinclair. The Vanguard Group, Inc. is currently the largest shareholder, with 10% of shares outstanding. For context, the second largest shareholder holds about 8.9% of the shares outstanding, followed by an ownership of 8.4% by the third-largest shareholder.

We also observed that the top 9 shareholders account for more than half of the share register, with a few smaller shareholders to balance the interests of the larger ones to a certain extent.

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

Insider Ownership Of HF Sinclair

The definition of an insider can differ slightly between different countries, but members of the board of directors always count. Management ultimately answers to the board. However, it is not uncommon for managers to be executive board members, especially if they are a founder or the CEO.

I generally consider insider ownership to be a good thing. However, on some occasions it makes it more difficult for other shareholders to hold the board accountable for decisions.

Our most recent data indicates that insiders own less than 1% of HF Sinclair Corporation. However, it's possible that insiders might have an indirect interest through a more complex structure. As it is a large company, we'd only expect insiders to own a small percentage of it. But it's worth noting that they own US$23m worth of shares. It is always good to see at least some insider ownership, but it might be worth checking if those insiders have been selling.

General Public Ownership

The general public-- including retail investors -- own 10% stake in the company, and hence can't easily be ignored. While this group can't necessarily call the shots, it can certainly have a real influence on how the company is run.

Private Company Ownership

We can see that Private Companies own 8.4%, of the shares on issue. It's hard to draw any conclusions from this fact alone, so its worth looking into who owns those private companies. Sometimes insiders or other related parties have an interest in shares in a public company through a separate private company.

Next Steps:

It's always worth thinking about the different groups who own shares in a company. But to understand HF Sinclair better, we need to consider many other factors. To that end, you should learn about the 4 warning signs we've spotted with HF Sinclair (including 1 which is a bit unpleasant) .

Ultimately the future is most important. You can access this free report on analyst forecasts for the company.

NB: Figures in this article are calculated using data from the last twelve months, which refer to the 12-month period ending on the last date of the month the financial statement is dated. This may not be consistent with full year annual report figures.

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This article by Simply Wall St is general in nature. We provide commentary based on historical data and analyst forecasts only using an unbiased methodology and our articles are not intended to be financial advice. It does not constitute a recommendation to buy or sell any stock, and does not take account of your objectives, or your financial situation. We aim to bring you long-term focused analysis driven by fundamental data. Note that our analysis may not factor in the latest price-sensitive company announcements or qualitative material. Simply Wall St has no position in any stocks mentioned.