Las Vegas Sands Corp.'s (NYSE:LVS) recent 5.0% pullback adds to one-year year losses, institutional owners may take drastic measures

Yahoo

22-05-2025

Institutions' substantial holdings in Las Vegas Sands implies that they have significant influence over the company's share price
A total of 4 investors have a majority stake in the company with 53% ownership
Insiders have been buying lately
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If you want to know who really controls Las Vegas Sands Corp. (NYSE:LVS), then you'll have to look at the makeup of its share registry. The group holding the most number of shares in the company, around 44% to be precise, is institutions. Put another way, the group faces the maximum upside potential (or downside risk).
And so it follows that institutional investors was the group most impacted after the company's market cap fell to US$29b last week after a 5.0% drop in the share price. Needless to say, the recent loss which further adds to the one-year loss to shareholders of 10% might not go down well especially with this category of shareholders. Also referred to as "smart money", institutions have a lot of sway over how a stock's price moves. Hence, if weakness in Las Vegas Sands' share price continues, institutional investors may feel compelled to sell the stock, which might not be ideal for individual investors.
In the chart below, we zoom in on the different ownership groups of Las Vegas Sands.
See our latest analysis for Las Vegas Sands
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.
We can see that Las Vegas Sands 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. 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 Las Vegas Sands, (below). Of course, keep in mind that there are other factors to consider, too.
Las Vegas Sands is not owned by hedge funds. Looking at our data, we can see that the largest shareholder is Sheldon G Adelson Family Trust with 25% of shares outstanding. For context, the second largest shareholder holds about 18% of the shares outstanding, followed by an ownership of 5.8% by the third-largest shareholder.
Our research also brought to light the fact that roughly 53% of the company is controlled by the top 4 shareholders suggesting that these owners wield significant influence on the business.
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 plenty of analysts covering the stock, so it might be worth seeing what they are forecasting, too.
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.
I generally consider insider ownership to be a good thing. However, on some occasions it makes it more difficult for other shareholders to hold the board accountable for decisions.
Our most recent data indicates that insiders own a reasonable proportion of Las Vegas Sands Corp.. Insiders own US$5.4b worth of shares in the US$29b company. That's quite meaningful. Most would say this shows a good degree of alignment with shareholders, especially in a company of this size. You can click here to see if those insiders have been buying or selling.
The general public, who are usually individual investors, hold a 10% stake in Las Vegas Sands. While this group can't necessarily call the shots, it can certainly have a real influence on how the company is run.
Our data indicates that Private Companies hold 27%, of the company's shares. 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.
It's always worth thinking about the different groups who own shares in a company. But to understand Las Vegas Sands better, we need to consider many other factors. Be aware that Las Vegas Sands is showing 2 warning signs in our investment analysis , you should know about...
If you are like me, you may want to think about whether this company will grow or shrink. Luckily, you can check this free report showing analyst forecasts for its 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.
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