What Kind Of Shareholders Own Edwards Lifesciences Corporation (NYSE:EW)?
If you want to know who really controls Edwards Lifesciences Corporation (NYSE:EW), then you'll have to look at the makeup of its share registry. Generally speaking, as a company grows, institutions will increase their ownership. Conversely, insiders often decrease their ownership over time. Companies that have been privatized tend to have low insider ownership.
With a market capitalization of US$53b, Edwards Lifesciences is rather large. We'd expect to see institutional investors on the register. Companies of this size are usually well known to retail investors, too. In the chart below, we can see that institutions are noticeable on the share registry. Let's delve deeper into each type of owner, to discover more about Edwards Lifesciences.
View our latest analysis for Edwards Lifesciences
What Does The Institutional Ownership Tell Us About Edwards Lifesciences?
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.
As you can see, institutional investors have a fair amount of stake in Edwards Lifesciences. 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 Edwards Lifesciences' 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 Edwards Lifesciences. Looking at our data, we can see that the largest shareholder is BlackRock, Inc. with 9.6% of shares outstanding. The Vanguard Group, Inc. is the second largest shareholder owning 8.0% of common stock, and Capital Research and Management Company holds about 4.4% of the company stock. In addition, we found that Michael Mussallem, the CEO has 0.5% of the shares allocated to his name
Looking at the shareholder registry, we can see that 51% of the ownership is controlled by the top 20 shareholders, meaning that no single shareholder has a majority interest in the ownership.
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 Edwards Lifesciences
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. 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.
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.
Our data suggests that insiders own under 1% of Edwards Lifesciences Corporation in their own names. 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$398m worth of shares. It is always good to see at least some insider ownership, but it might be worth checking if those insiders have been selling.
General Public Ownership
With a 15% ownership, the general public have some degree of sway over Edwards Lifesciences. 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 Edwards Lifesciences better, we need to consider many other factors. Be aware that Edwards Lifesciences is showing 2 warning signs in our investment analysis , 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.
This article by Simply Wall St is general in nature. 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.
Have feedback on this article? Concerned about the content? Get in touch with us directly. Alternatively, email editorial-team@simplywallst.com.
