Key Insights

• Significantly high institutional ownership implies L3Harris Technologies' stock price is sensitive to their trading actions
• 51% of the business is held by the top 12 shareholders
• Recent sales by insiders

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If you want to know who really controls L3Harris Technologies, Inc. (NYSE:LHX), then you'll have to look at the makeup of its share registry. With 88% stake, institutions possess the maximum shares in the company. In other words, the group stands to gain the most (or lose the most) from their investment into the company.

Since institutional have access to huge amounts of capital, their market moves tend to receive a lot of scrutiny by retail or individual investors. As a result, a sizeable amount of institutional money invested in a firm is generally viewed as a positive attribute.

Let's take a closer look to see what the different types of shareholders can tell us about L3Harris Technologies.

Check out our latest analysis for L3Harris Technologies

What Does The Institutional Ownership Tell Us About L3Harris Technologies?

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 L3Harris Technologies 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 L3Harris Technologies' 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. L3Harris Technologies is not owned by hedge funds. The company's largest shareholder is The Vanguard Group, Inc., with ownership of 12%. BlackRock, Inc. is the second largest shareholder owning 9.4% of common stock, and Capital Research and Management Company holds about 6.4% of the company stock.

After doing some more digging, we found that the top 12 have the combined ownership of 51% in the company, suggesting that no single shareholder has significant control over the company.

Researching institutional ownership is a good way to gauge and filter a stock's expected performance. The same can be achieved by studying analyst sentiments. There are a reasonable number of analysts covering the stock, so it might be useful to find out their aggregate view on the future.

Insider Ownership Of L3Harris Technologies

While the precise definition of an insider can be subjective, almost everyone considers board members to be insiders. The company management answer to the board and the latter should represent the interests of shareholders. Notably, sometimes top-level managers are on the board themselves.

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 most recent data indicates that insiders own less than 1% of L3Harris Technologies, Inc.. Being so large, we would not expect insiders to own a large proportion of the stock. Collectively, they own US$128m of stock. It is good to see board members owning shares, but it might be worth checking if those insiders have been buying.

General Public Ownership

The general public, who are usually individual investors, hold a 11% stake in L3Harris Technologies. This size of ownership, while considerable, may not be enough to change company policy if the decision is not in sync with other large shareholders.

Next Steps:

While it is well worth considering the different groups that own a company, there are other factors that are even more important. For instance, we've identified 2 warning signs for L3Harris Technologies that you should be aware of.

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.

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This article by Simply Wall St is general in nature. We provide commentary based on historical data and analyst forecasts only using an unbiased methodology and our articles are not intended to be financial advice. 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.