AAON, Inc.'s (NASDAQ:AAON) large institutional owners must be happy as stock continues to impress, up 5.5% over the past week

Key Insights

• Given the large stake in the stock by institutions, AAON's stock price might be vulnerable to their trading decisions
• A total of 7 investors have a majority stake in the company with 52% ownership
• Recent sales by insiders

If you want to know who really controls AAON, Inc. (NASDAQ:AAON), then you'll have to look at the makeup of its share registry. We can see that institutions own the lion's share in the company with 72% ownership. That is, the group stands to benefit the most if the stock rises (or lose the most if there is a downturn).

And as as result, institutional investors reaped the most rewards after the company's stock price gained 5.5% last week. The one-year return on investment is currently 37% and last week's gain would have been more than welcomed.

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

See our latest analysis for AAON

What Does The Institutional Ownership Tell Us About AAON?

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.

We can see that AAON 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. 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 AAON's earnings history below. Of course, the future is what really matters.

Since institutional investors own more than half the issued stock, the board will likely have to pay attention to their preferences. Hedge funds don't have many shares in AAON. From our data, we infer that the largest shareholder is Norman Asbjornson (who also holds the title of Top Key Executive) with 16% of shares outstanding. Its usually considered a good sign when insiders own a significant number of shares in the company, and in this case, we're glad to see a company insider play the role of a key stakeholder. BlackRock, Inc. is the second largest shareholder owning 13% of common stock, and The Vanguard Group, Inc. holds about 8.8% of the company stock.

On further inspection, we found that more than half the company's shares are owned by the top 7 shareholders, suggesting that the interests of the larger shareholders are balanced out to an extent by the smaller ones.

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 AAON

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 most recent data indicates that insiders own a reasonable proportion of AAON, Inc.. Insiders own US$1.3b worth of shares in the US$7.4b company. That's quite meaningful. It is good to see this level of investment. You can check here to see if those insiders have been buying recently.

General Public Ownership

With a 10% ownership, the general public, mostly comprising of individual investors, have some degree of sway over AAON. 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.

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. For instance, we've identified 2 warning signs for AAON that you should be aware of.

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.