* Significant control over Sika by individual investors implies that the general public has more power to influence management and governance-related decisions

* 32% of the business is held by the top 25 shareholders

* Institutions own 41% of Sika

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To get a sense of who is truly in control of Sika AG (VTX:SIKA), it is important to understand the ownership structure of the business. With 59% stake, individual investors possess the maximum shares in the company. Put another way, the group faces the maximum upside potential (or downside risk).

While institutions who own 41% came under pressure after market cap dropped to CHF27b last week,individual investors took the most losses.

Let's take a closer look to see what the different types of shareholders can tell us about Sika.

See our latest analysis for Sika

What Does The Institutional Ownership Tell Us About Sika?

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.

Sika already has institutions on the share registry. Indeed, they own a respectable stake in the company. 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. It is not uncommon to see a big share price drop if two large institutional investors try to sell out of a stock at the same time. So it is worth checking the past earnings trajectory of Sika, (below). Of course, keep in mind that there are other factors to consider, too.

Hedge funds don't have many shares in Sika. Our data shows that BlackRock, Inc. is the largest shareholder with 7.7% of shares outstanding. For context, the second largest shareholder holds about 5.6% of the shares outstanding, followed by an ownership of 4.4% by the third-largest shareholder.

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 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. There are a reasonable number of analysts covering the stock, so it might be useful to find out their aggregate view on the future.