McDonald's Corporation (NYSE:MCD) is largely controlled by institutional shareholders who own 72% of the company

Key Insights

• Given the large stake in the stock by institutions, McDonald's' stock price might be vulnerable to their trading decisions

• A total of 25 investors have a majority stake in the company with 44% ownership

• Insiders have sold recently

A look at the shareholders of McDonald's Corporation (NYSE:MCD) can tell us which group is most powerful. And the group that holds the biggest piece of the pie are institutions with 72% ownership. In other words, the group stands to gain the most (or lose the most) from their investment into the company.

Because institutional owners have a huge pool of resources and liquidity, their investing decisions tend to carry a great deal of weight, especially with individual investors. Hence, having a considerable amount of institutional money invested in a company is often regarded as a desirable trait.

In the chart below, we zoom in on the different ownership groups of McDonald's.

Check out our latest analysis for McDonald's

What Does The Institutional Ownership Tell Us About McDonald's?

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 McDonald's 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 McDonald'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. We note that hedge funds don't have a meaningful investment in McDonald's. Our data shows that The Vanguard Group, Inc. is the largest shareholder with 9.7% of shares outstanding. In comparison, the second and third largest shareholders hold about 7.0% and 4.8% of the stock.

Our studies suggest that the top 25 shareholders collectively control less than half of the company's shares, meaning that the company's shares are widely disseminated and there is no dominant shareholder.

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.