Using data from analyst forecasts alongside ownership research, one can better assess the future performance of a company

Every investor in SIG Group AG (VTX:SIGN) should be aware of the most powerful shareholder groups. And the group that holds the biggest piece of the pie are institutions with 55% ownership. In other words, the group stands to gain the most (or lose the most) from their investment into the company.

And so it follows that institutional investors was the group most impacted after the company's market cap fell to CHF6.5b last week after a 5.2% drop in the share price. Needless to say, the recent loss which further adds to the one-year loss to shareholders of 23% might not go down well especially with this category of shareholders. Often called "market movers", institutions wield significant power in influencing the price dynamics of any stock. As a result, if the downtrend continues, institutions may face pressures to sell SIG Group, which might have negative implications on individual investors.

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

View our latest analysis for SIG 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.

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

Institutional investors own over 50% of the company, so together than can probably strongly influence board decisions. Hedge funds don't have many shares in SIG Group. Looking at our data, we can see that the largest shareholder is Clil Holding B.V. with 10% of shares outstanding. Freemont Capital Pte. Ltd. is the second largest shareholder owning 10.0% of common stock, and Al Obeikan Printing And Packaging Company Cjs holds about 4.6% of the company stock.

After doing some more digging, we found that the top 14 have the combined ownership of 50% in the company, suggesting that no single shareholder has significant control over the company.

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

While the precise definition of an insider can be subjective, almost everyone considers board members to be insiders. The company management answer to the board and the latter should represent the interests of shareholders. Notably, sometimes top-level managers are on the board themselves.

Insider ownership is positive when it signals leadership are thinking like the true owners of the company. However, high insider ownership can also give immense power to a small group within the company. This can be negative in some circumstances.

Our information suggests that SIG Group AG insiders own under 1% of the company. We do note, however, it is possible insiders have an indirect interest through a private company or other corporate structure. It's a big company, so even a small proportional interest can create alignment between the board and shareholders. In this case insiders own CHF18m worth of shares. It is good to see board members owning shares, but it might be worth checking if those insiders have been buying.

The general public-- including retail investors -- own 30% stake in the company, and hence can't easily be ignored. While this size of ownership may not be enough to sway a policy decision in their favour, they can still make a collective impact on company policies.

We can see that Private Companies own 15%, of the shares on issue. It might be worth looking deeper into this. If related parties, such as insiders, have an interest in one of these private companies, that should be disclosed in the annual report. Private companies may also have a strategic interest in the company.

It's always worth thinking about the different groups who own shares in a company. But to understand SIG Group better, we need to consider many other factors. For example, we've discovered 3 warning signs for SIG Group that you should be aware of before investing here.

But ultimately it is the future, not the past, that will determine how well the owners of this business will do. Therefore we think it advisable to take a look at this free report showing whether analysts are predicting a brighter future.