With 38% institutional ownership, Powszechny Zaklad Ubezpieczen SA (WSE:PZU) is a favorite amongst the big guns

Key Insights

• Significantly high institutional ownership implies Powszechny Zaklad Ubezpieczen's stock price is sensitive to their trading actions
• The top 5 shareholders own 52% of the company
• 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 Powszechny Zaklad Ubezpieczen SA (WSE:PZU), 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 38% ownership. Put another way, the group faces the maximum upside potential (or downside risk).

Because institutional owners have a huge pool of resources and liquidity, their investing decisions tend to carry a great deal of weight, especially with individual investors. Therefore, a good portion of institutional money invested in the company is usually a huge vote of confidence on its future.

Let's delve deeper into each type of owner of Powszechny Zaklad Ubezpieczen, beginning with the chart below.

View our latest analysis for Powszechny Zaklad Ubezpieczen

What Does The Institutional Ownership Tell Us About Powszechny Zaklad Ubezpieczen?

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.

As you can see, institutional investors have a fair amount of stake in Powszechny Zaklad Ubezpieczen. 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 Powszechny Zaklad Ubezpieczen's earnings history below. Of course, the future is what really matters.

Powszechny Zaklad Ubezpieczen is not owned by hedge funds. Looking at our data, we can see that the largest shareholder is The State Treasury of the Republic of Poland with 34% of shares outstanding. With 5.3% and 5.0% of the shares outstanding respectively, Allianz Asset Management GmbH and Nationale-Nederlanden Powszechne Towarzystwo Emerytalne S.A. are the second and third largest shareholders.

To make our study more interesting, we found that the top 5 shareholders control more than half of the company which implies that this group has considerable sway over the company's decision-making.

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 plenty of analysts covering the stock, so it might be worth seeing what they are forecasting, too.

Insider Ownership Of Powszechny Zaklad Ubezpieczen

The definition of company insiders can be subjective and does vary between jurisdictions. Our data reflects individual insiders, capturing board members at the very least. Company management run the business, but the CEO will answer to the board, even if he or she is a member of it.

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 data cannot confirm that board members are holding shares personally. It is unusual not to have at least some personal holdings by board members, so our data might be flawed. A good next step would be to check how much the CEO is paid.

General Public Ownership

The general public, who are usually individual investors, hold a 28% stake in Powszechny Zaklad Ubezpieczen. This size of ownership, while considerable, may not be enough to change company policy if the decision is not in sync with other large shareholders.

Next Steps:

I find it very interesting to look at who exactly owns a company. But to truly gain insight, we need to consider other information, too. To that end, you should be aware of the 1 warning sign we've spotted with Powszechny Zaklad Ubezpieczen .

If you would prefer discover what analysts are predicting in terms of future growth, do not miss this free report on analyst forecasts.

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.