What Type Of Shareholders Own The Most Number of Genuine Parts Company (NYSE:GPC) Shares?

If you want to know who really controls Genuine Parts Company (NYSE:GPC), then you'll have to look at the makeup of its share registry. Institutions often own shares in more established companies, while it's not unusual to see insiders own a fair bit of smaller companies. Companies that used to be publicly owned tend to have lower insider ownership.

Genuine Parts is a pretty big company. It has a market capitalization of US$14b. Normally institutions would own a significant portion of a company this size. In the chart below, we can see that institutions own shares in the company. We can zoom in on the different ownership groups, to learn more about Genuine Parts.

Check out our latest analysis for Genuine Parts

What Does The Institutional Ownership Tell Us About Genuine Parts?

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 Genuine Parts does have institutional investors; and they hold a good portion of the company's stock. This can indicate that the company has a certain degree of credibility in the investment community. However, it is best to be wary of relying on the supposed validation that comes with institutional investors. They too, get it wrong sometimes. 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 Genuine Parts' 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. We note that hedge funds don't have a meaningful investment in Genuine Parts. The Vanguard Group, Inc. is currently the company's largest shareholder with 11% of shares outstanding. For context, the second largest shareholder holds about 10% of the shares outstanding, followed by an ownership of 6.0% by the third-largest shareholder.

A closer look at our ownership figures suggests that the top 19 shareholders have a combined ownership of 51% implying that no single shareholder has a majority.

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 Genuine Parts

While the precise definition of an insider can be subjective, almost everyone considers board members to be insiders. Management ultimately answers to the board. However, it is not uncommon for managers to be executive board members, especially if they are a founder or the CEO.

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 information suggests that Genuine Parts Company insiders own under 1% of the company. As it is a large company, we'd only expect insiders to own a small percentage of it. But it's worth noting that they own US$83m worth of shares. It is good to see board members owning shares, but it might be worth checking if those insiders have been buying.

General Public Ownership

With a 19% ownership, the general public have some degree of sway over Genuine Parts. 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 Genuine Parts better, we need to consider many other factors. For example, we've discovered 4 warning signs for Genuine Parts 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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