Ownership research along with analyst forecasts data help provide a good understanding of opportunities in a stock

Every investor in CRISPR Therapeutics AG (NASDAQ:CRSP) should be aware of the most powerful shareholder groups. We can see that institutions own the lion's share in the company with 73% ownership. Put another way, the group faces the maximum upside potential (or downside risk).

And institutional investors endured the highest losses after the company's share price fell by 8.3% last week. This set of investors may especially be concerned about the current loss, which adds to a one-year loss of 37% for shareholders. Often called "market movers", institutions wield significant power in influencing the price dynamics of any stock. Hence, if weakness in CRISPR Therapeutics' 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 CRISPR Therapeutics.

See our latest analysis for CRISPR Therapeutics

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.

CRISPR Therapeutics 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. 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 CRISPR Therapeutics' earnings history below. Of course, the future is what really matters.

Institutional investors own over 50% of the company, so together than can probably strongly influence board decisions. Hedge funds don't have many shares in CRISPR Therapeutics. Our data shows that ARK Investment Management LLC is the largest shareholder with 11% of shares outstanding. For context, the second largest shareholder holds about 9.8% of the shares outstanding, followed by an ownership of 7.0% by the third-largest shareholder.

A closer look at our ownership figures suggests that the top 14 shareholders have a combined ownership of 51% implying that no single shareholder has a majority.