What Is The Ownership Structure Like For Dime Community Bancshares, Inc. (NASDAQ:DCOM)?

A look at the shareholders of Dime Community Bancshares, Inc. (NASDAQ:DCOM) can tell us which group is most powerful. Institutions will often hold stock in bigger companies, and we expect to see insiders owning a noticeable percentage of the smaller ones. I generally like to see some degree of insider ownership, even if only a little. As Nassim Nicholas Taleb said, 'Don’t tell me what you think, tell me what you have in your portfolio.

With a market capitalization of US$1.3b, Dime Community Bancshares is a decent size, so it is probably on the radar of institutional investors. In the chart below, we can see that institutions own shares in the company. Let's delve deeper into each type of owner, to discover more about Dime Community Bancshares.

See our latest analysis for Dime Community Bancshares

What Does The Institutional Ownership Tell Us About Dime Community Bancshares?

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.

We can see that Dime Community Bancshares does have institutional investors; and they hold a good portion of the company's stock. 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 Dime Community Bancshares, (below). Of course, keep in mind that there are other factors to consider, too.

It looks like hedge funds own 8.9% of Dime Community Bancshares shares. That catches my attention because hedge funds sometimes try to influence management, or bring about changes that will create near term value for shareholders. Looking at our data, we can see that the largest shareholder is BlackRock, Inc. with 11% of shares outstanding. The Vanguard Group, Inc. is the second largest shareholder owning 9.0% of common stock, and Basswood Capital Management, L.L.C. holds about 8.9% of the company stock. Furthermore, CEO Kevin O'Connor is the owner of 0.6% of the company's shares.

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.

While it makes sense to study institutional ownership data for a company, it also makes sense to study analyst sentiments to know which way the wind is blowing. There are a reasonable number of analysts covering the stock, so it might be useful to find out their aggregate view on the future.

Insider Ownership Of Dime Community Bancshares

The definition of an insider can differ slightly between different countries, but members of the board of directors always count. 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.

Most consider insider ownership a positive because it can indicate the board is well aligned with other shareholders. However, on some occasions too much power is concentrated within this group.

We can see that insiders own shares in Dime Community Bancshares, Inc.. It is a pretty big company, so it is generally a positive to see some potentially meaningful alignment. In this case, they own around US$101m worth of shares (at current prices). If you would like to explore the question of insider alignment, you can click here to see if insiders have been buying or selling.

General Public Ownership

The general public, who are mostly retail investors, collectively hold 57% of Dime Community Bancshares shares. With this size of ownership, retail investors can collectively play a role in decisions that affect shareholder returns, such as dividend policies and the appointment of directors. They can also exercise the power to decline an acquisition or merger that may not improve profitability.

Next Steps:

It's always worth thinking about the different groups who own shares in a company. But to understand Dime Community Bancshares better, we need to consider many other factors. For example, we've discovered 2 warning signs for Dime Community Bancshares (1 makes us a bit uncomfortable!) that you should be aware of before investing here.

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. 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.
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