How to read a shareholding pattern (NSE & BSE guide, 2026)

A shareholding pattern is a quarterly disclosure that tells you who owns a listed company and in what proportion: the promoters who run it, the foreign and domestic institutions that have bought in, and the public. It is filed with the NSE and BSE and it is one of the cleanest public records of how ownership of a company is shifting over time.

What is a shareholding pattern, and who files it?

The rule sits in Regulation 31 of SEBI's Listing Obligations and Disclosure Requirements (LODR). Every company listed on an Indian exchange has to submit its shareholding pattern to the NSE and BSE each quarter. Because it is filed under a regulatory obligation and published by the exchange, it is a primary source: the numbers come straight from the company, not from an estimate.

The main ownership categories

A shareholding pattern splits every owner into three top-level buckets. Learning these is most of the job.

• Promoter and Promoter Group. The founders and the entities they control. This is the "skin in the game" line most readers check first.
• Public. Everyone else, split into two parts. Institutions covers FIIs or FPIs, mutual funds, insurers, banks, and alternative investment funds. Non-institutions covers individual retail holders and bodies corporate.
• Non Promoter and Non Public. Smaller technical categories such as shares held by an employee trust or a custodian against depository receipts.

The percentages in these buckets always add up to 100. When one rises, another falls, so the useful reading is always relative.

What promoter holding and pledging tell you

Two numbers on the promoter line matter. The first is the promoter's overall stake and how it moves quarter over quarter. A steady or rising promoter stake is a fact some readers weigh differently from a falling one. The second is pledging: the share of promoter holdings put up as collateral for loans, which the pattern reports on its own line. Pledged shares can be sold by the lender if a loan goes bad, so the pledge percentage is a risk fact worth reading alongside the stake itself.

Since the June 2025 quarter, the pledge column is no longer the whole encumbrance picture. Read the total encumbered figure instead, for the reasons in the next section.

The columns SEBI added in 2025

The format changed, and a pattern filed today does not match one filed in early 2025. SEBI circular SEBI/HO/CFD/CFD-PoD-2/P/CIR/2025/35 dated 20 March 2025 modified the prescribed formats under the LODR Master Circular of 11 November 2024, with effect from the quarter ending 30 June 2025. Three changes matter when comparing quarters:

• Encumbrances beyond pledges are now itemised. Tables I to IV disclose the non-disposal undertaking, other encumbrances if any, and the total number of shares pledged or otherwise encumbered including NDU. Table I carries pledged, NDU and other encumbrances as separate columns plus a total encumbered column that adds the three. A promoter can show a nil pledge while a real part of the holding is locked by undertaking, which older filings did not surface. The two instruments are compared in pledge vs non-disposal undertaking.
• A fully diluted column was added, capturing the total number of shares on a fully diluted basis including warrants, ESOPs and convertible securities. The existing convertible-securities column header was also clarified to state that it includes ESOPs.
• Promoters with nil holdings are traceable. A footnote to Table II provides that details of promoter and promoter group entities with nil shareholding can be accessed, so an entity that has gone to zero does not simply vanish from the table.

A jump in disclosed encumbrance around that quarter can therefore be a format change rather than new borrowing. The promoter's own encumbrance disclosures under the takeover code, covered in how to check promoter pledging, settle which it was.

How FII and DII holdings show up

Foreign and domestic institutions are the "smart money" names most people come to a shareholding pattern to find. FIIs or FPIs (the term SEBI now uses) sit in the foreign institutional line. DIIs, which include mutual funds, insurance companies, banks, and pension funds, sit in the domestic institutional line. Tracking these two lines across several quarters shows you whether institutions are building or trimming a position, as a matter of record you can verify yourself.

How to read a shareholding pattern without over-reading it

A single filing is a snapshot. The value is in the trend and the context.

• Compare quarter over quarter rather than reading one filing alone.
• Check the filing date. The pattern is up to 21 days old on the day it publishes.
• Read total encumbered next to the promoter stake, not the pledge column on its own.
• Cross-reference the institutional lines against other disclosures for the same company.

Flock turns each shareholding pattern into a readable ownership breakdown, keeps every figure stamped with its filing date and linked back to the exchange filing, and shows how each category moves over time. What that ownership picture means for you is your call to make.