Walmart Inc. (NYSE:WMT) most popular amongst private companies who own 46% of the shares, institutions hold 33% (2024)

Key Insights

• The considerable ownership by private companies in Walmart indicates that they collectively have a greater say in management and business strategy
• The top 3 shareholders own 51% of the company
• Insiders have sold recently

A look at the shareholders of Walmart Inc. (NYSE:WMT) can tell us which group is most powerful. The group holding the most number of shares in the company, around 46% to be precise, is private companies. That is, the group stands to benefit the most if the stock rises (or lose the most if there is a downturn).

And institutions on the other hand have a 33% ownership in the company. Generally speaking, as a company grows, institutions will increase their ownership. Conversely, insiders often decrease their ownership over time.

Let's delve deeper into each type of owner of Walmart, beginning with the chart below.

View our latest analysis for Walmart

What Does The Institutional Ownership Tell Us About Walmart?

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.

As you can see, institutional investors have a fair amount of stake in Walmart. 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 Walmart, (below). Of course, keep in mind that there are other factors to consider, too.

We note that hedge funds don't have a meaningful investment in Walmart. The company's largest shareholder is Walton Enterprises, LLC, with ownership of 37%. With 9.1% and 4.8% of the shares outstanding respectively, Walton Family and The Vanguard Group, Inc. are the second and third largest shareholders.

After doing some more digging, we found that the top 3 shareholders collectively control more than half of the company's shares, implying that they have considerable power to influence the company's decisions.

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. Quite a few analysts cover the stock, so you could look into forecast growth quite easily.

Insider Ownership Of Walmart

While the precise definition of an insider can be subjective, almost everyone considers board members to be insiders. Company management run the business, but the CEO will answer to the board, even if he or she is a member of it.

Insider ownership is positive when it signals leadership are thinking like the true owners of the company. However, high insider ownership can also give immense power to a small group within the company. This can be negative in some circ*mstances.

Our information suggests that Walmart Inc. insiders own under 1% of the company. But they may have an indirect interest through a corporate structure that we haven't picked up on. It is a very large company, so it would be surprising to see insiders own a large proportion of the company. Though their holding amounts to less than 1%, we can see that board members collectively own US$3.7b worth of shares (at current prices). 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-- including retail investors -- own 20% stake in the company, and hence can't easily be ignored. While this size of ownership may not be enough to sway a policy decision in their favour, they can still make a collective impact on company policies.

Private Company Ownership

It seems that Private Companies own 46%, of the Walmart stock. It's hard to draw any conclusions from this fact alone, so its worth looking into who owns those private companies. Sometimes insiders or other related parties have an interest in shares in a public company through a separate private company.

Next Steps:

It's always worth thinking about the different groups who own shares in a company. But to understand Walmart better, we need to consider many other factors. To that end, you should be aware of the 3 warning signs we've spotted with Walmart .

But ultimately it is the future, not the past, that will determine how well the owners of this business will do. Therefore we think it advisable to take a look at this free report showing whether analysts are predicting a brighter future.

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.