Who Are The Major Shareholders Of ProAssurance Corporation (NYSE:PRA)?
In this article, I’m going to take a look at ProAssurance Corporation’s (NYSE:PRA) latest ownership structure, a non-fundamental factor which is important, but remains a less discussed subject among investors. The impact of a company’s ownership structure affects both its short- and long-term performance. Differences in ownership structure of companies can have a profound effect on how management’s incentives are aligned with shareholder returns, which is why we’ll take a moment to analyse PRA’s shareholder registry. All data provided is as of the most recent financial year end.
See our latest analysis for ProAssurance
Institutional Ownership
In PRA’s case, institutional ownership stands at 82.16%, significant enough to cause considerable price moves in the case of large institutional transactions, especially when there is a low level of public shares available on the market to trade. Although PRA has a high institutional ownership, such stock moves, in the short-term, are more commonly linked to a particular type of active institutional investors – hedge funds. In the case of PRA, investors need not worry about such volatility considering active hedge funds don’t have a significant stake. However, we should dig deeper into PRA’s ownership structure and find out how other key ownership classes can affect its investment profile.
Insider Ownership
Another important group of shareholders are company insiders. Insider ownership has to do more with how the company is managed and less to do with the direct impact of the magnitude of shares trading on the market. Although individuals in PRA hold only a 1.99% stake, given PRA is a large-cap company, it is a relatively large amount. This is a good sign for shareholders as the company’s executives and directors have their incentives directly linked to the company’s performance. In addition to this, it may be interesting to look at insider buying and selling activities. Keep in mind that buying may be sign of upbeat future expectations, but selling doesn’t necessarily mean the opposite as the insiders might just be doing it out of their personal financial needs.
General Public Ownership
The general public holds a substantial 15.84% stake in PRA, making it a highly popular stock among retail investors. This size of ownership gives retail investors collective power in deciding on major policy decisions such as executive compensation, appointment of directors and acquisitions of businesses. This level of ownership gives retail investors the power to sway key policy decisions such as board composition, executive compensation, and potential acquisitions. This is a positive sign for an investor who wants to be involved in key decision-making of the company.
What this means for you:
PRA’s considerably high level of institutional ownership calls for further analysis into its margin of safety. This is to avoid getting trapped in a sustained sell-off that is often observed in stocks with this level of institutional participation. However, if you are building an investment case for PRA, ownership structure alone should not dictate your decision to buy or sell the stock. Instead, you should be evaluating company-specific factors such as ProAssurance’s past track record and financial health. I highly recommend you to complete your research by taking a look at the following:
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.
To help readers see pass the short term volatility of the financial market, we aim to bring you a long-term focused research analysis purely driven by fundamental data. Note that our analysis does not factor in the latest price sensitive company announcements.
The author is an independent contributor and at the time of publication had no position in the stocks mentioned.
