Institutional investors in U.S. Silica Holdings, Inc. (NYSE:SLCA) see US$147m decrease in market cap last week, although long-term gains have benefitted them.

If you want to know who really controls U.S. Silica Holdings, Inc. (NYSE:SLCA), then you'll have to look at the makeup of its share registry. The group holding the most number of shares in the company, around 79% to be precise, is institutions. Put another way, the group faces the maximum upside potential (or downside risk).

Losing money on investments is something no shareholder enjoys, least of all institutional investors who saw their holdings value drop by 15% last week. Still, the 14% one-year gains may have helped mitigate their overall losses. They should, however, be mindful of further losses in the future.

Let's take a closer look to see what the different types of shareholders can tell us about U.S. Silica Holdings.

View our latest analysis for U.S. Silica Holdings

What Does The Institutional Ownership Tell Us About U.S. Silica Holdings?

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.

U.S. Silica Holdings 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 U.S. Silica Holdings' 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. Our data indicates that hedge funds own 5.4% of U.S. Silica Holdings. That's interesting, because hedge funds can be quite active and activist. Many look for medium term catalysts that will drive the share price higher. Our data shows that BlackRock, Inc. is the largest shareholder with 17% of shares outstanding. With 8.5% and 5.4% of the shares outstanding respectively, The Vanguard Group, Inc. and Renaissance Technologies LLC are the second and third largest shareholders. Furthermore, CEO Bryan Shinn is the owner of 0.9% of the company's shares.

On further inspection, we found that more than half the company's shares are owned by the top 9 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 U.S. Silica Holdings

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. 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.

Shareholders would probably be interested to learn that insiders own shares in U.S. Silica Holdings, Inc.. As individuals, the insiders collectively own US$20m worth of the US$858m company. Some would say this shows alignment of interests between shareholders and the board. But it might be worth checking if those insiders have been selling.

General Public Ownership

The general public-- including retail investors -- own 13% 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.

Next Steps:

It's always worth thinking about the different groups who own shares in a company. But to understand U.S. Silica Holdings better, we need to consider many other factors. Consider risks, for instance. Every company has them, and we've spotted 1 warning sign for U.S. Silica Holdings you should know about.

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.