Sinclair, Inc.'s (NASDAQ:SBGI) most bullish insider is Top Key Executive David Smith, and their holdings value went up by 8.5% last week (2025)

Key Insights

• Insiders appear to have a vested interest in Sinclair's growth, as seen by their sizeable ownership

• A total of 6 investors have a majority stake in the company with 51% ownership

• 41% of Sinclair is held by Institutions

If you want to know who really controls Sinclair, Inc. (NASDAQ:SBGI), then you'll have to look at the makeup of its share registry. We can see that individual insiders own the lion's share in the company with 41% ownership. Put another way, the group faces the maximum upside potential (or downside risk).

As a result, insiders scored the highest last week as the company hit US$928m market cap following a 8.5% gain in the stock.

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

See our latest analysis for Sinclair

What Does The Institutional Ownership Tell Us About Sinclair?

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.

Sinclair 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. 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 Sinclair, (below). Of course, keep in mind that there are other factors to consider, too.

Hedge funds don't have many shares in Sinclair. From our data, we infer that the largest shareholder is David Smith (who also holds the title of Top Key Executive) with 14% of shares outstanding. Its usually considered a good sign when insiders own a significant number of shares in the company, and in this case, we're glad to see a company insider play the role of a key stakeholder. Meanwhile, the second and third largest shareholders, hold 9.7% and 9.5%, of the shares outstanding, respectively. Note that two of the top three shareholders are also Secretary and Member of the Board of Directors, respectively, once again pointing to significant ownership by company insiders. In addition, we found that Christopher Ripley, the CEO has 0.9% of the shares allocated to their name.

On further inspection, we found that more than half the company's shares are owned by the top 6 shareholders, suggesting that the interests of the larger shareholders are balanced out to an extent by the smaller ones.

While it makes sense to study institutional ownership data for a company, it also makes sense to study analyst sentiments to know which way the wind is blowing. Quite a few analysts cover the stock, so you could look into forecast growth quite easily.

Insider Ownership Of Sinclair

The definition of an insider can differ slightly between different countries, but members of the board of directors always count. 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.

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 circumstances.

Our most recent data indicates that insiders own a reasonable proportion of Sinclair, Inc.. It has a market capitalization of just US$928m, and insiders have US$382m worth of shares in their own names. This may suggest that the founders still own a lot of shares. You can click here to see if they have been buying or selling.

General Public Ownership

With a 10% ownership, the general public, mostly comprising of individual investors, have some degree of sway over Sinclair. While this group can't necessarily call the shots, it can certainly have a real influence on how the company is run.

Private Company Ownership

Our data indicates that Private Companies hold 7.8%, of the company's shares. It might be worth looking deeper into this. If related parties, such as insiders, have an interest in one of these private companies, that should be disclosed in the annual report. Private companies may also have a strategic interest in the company.

Next Steps:

While it is well worth considering the different groups that own a company, there are other factors that are even more important. Consider for instance, the ever-present spectre of investment risk. We've identified 4 warning signs with Sinclair (at least 1 which makes us a bit uncomfortable) , and understanding them should be part of your investment process.

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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