With 89% ownership of the shares, Air Products and Chemicals, Inc. (NYSE:APD) is heavily dominated by institutional owners

Key Insights

• Significantly high institutional ownership implies Air Products and Chemicals' stock price is sensitive to their trading actions
• A total of 21 investors have a majority stake in the company with 50% ownership
• 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 Air Products and Chemicals, Inc. (NYSE:APD), 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 89% ownership. That is, the group stands to benefit the most if the stock rises (or lose the most if there is a downturn).

Since institutional have access to huge amounts of capital, their market moves tend to receive a lot of scrutiny by retail or individual investors. As a result, a sizeable amount of institutional money invested in a firm is generally viewed as a positive attribute.

Let's delve deeper into each type of owner of Air Products and Chemicals, beginning with the chart below.

View our latest analysis for Air Products and Chemicals

What Does The Institutional Ownership Tell Us About Air Products and Chemicals?

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 Air Products and Chemicals 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 Air Products and Chemicals' earnings history below. Of course, the future is what really matters.

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 Air Products and Chemicals. Looking at our data, we can see that the largest shareholder is The Vanguard Group, Inc. with 9.4% of shares outstanding. For context, the second largest shareholder holds about 6.6% of the shares outstanding, followed by an ownership of 5.8% by the third-largest shareholder.

After doing some more digging, we found that the top 21 have the combined ownership of 50% in the company, suggesting that no single shareholder has significant control over the company.

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. Quite a few analysts cover the stock, so you could look into forecast growth quite easily.

Insider Ownership Of Air Products and Chemicals

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 less than 1% of Air Products and Chemicals, Inc.. Being so large, we would not expect insiders to own a large proportion of the stock. Collectively, they own US$202m of stock. Arguably recent buying and selling is just as important to consider. You can click here to see if insiders have been buying or selling.

General Public Ownership

With a 11% ownership, the general public, mostly comprising of individual investors, have some degree of sway over Air Products and Chemicals. While this group can't necessarily call the shots, it can certainly have a real influence on how the company is run.

Next Steps:

It's always worth thinking about the different groups who own shares in a company. But to understand Air Products and Chemicals better, we need to consider many other factors. For example, we've discovered 2 warning signs for Air Products and Chemicals 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.

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.