Key Insights

• Institutions' substantial holdings in Fastenal implies that they have significant influence over the company's share price

• 51% of the business is held by the top 25 shareholders

• Insiders have sold recently

To get a sense of who is truly in control of Fastenal Company (NASDAQ:FAST), it is important to understand the ownership structure of the business. We can see that institutions own the lion's share in the company with 83% ownership. Put another way, the group faces the maximum upside potential (or downside risk).

And as as result, institutional investors reaped the most rewards after the company's stock price gained 4.0% last week. The gains from last week would have further boosted the one-year return to shareholders which currently stand at 46%.

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

Check out our latest analysis for Fastenal

What Does The Institutional Ownership Tell Us About Fastenal?

Institutions typically measure themselves against a benchmark when reporting to their own investors, so they often become more enthusiastic about a stock once it's included in a major index. We would expect most companies to have some institutions on the register, especially if they are growing.

We can see that Fastenal 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 Fastenal's 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. Fastenal is not owned by hedge funds. The Vanguard Group, Inc. is currently the company's largest shareholder with 12% of shares outstanding. Meanwhile, the second and third largest shareholders, hold 8.0% and 4.8%, of the shares outstanding, respectively.

Looking at the shareholder registry, we can see that 51% of the ownership is controlled by the top 25 shareholders, meaning that no single shareholder has a majority interest in the ownership.

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