Open the latest shareholding pattern, write down what the promoters hold as a percentage and as a number of shares, compare both with the previous quarter, and check the pledged column. Five minutes. The aim is not to decide whether the movement is good or bad. It is to find the filing that explains it.
Every listed company files a shareholding pattern each quarter, within 21 days of the quarter ending. It is a dated record of who owns the company, and it is the only ownership document that arrives on a fixed schedule whether anything has happened or not.
You will not find it in the announcements feed. It sits on the company's own page on the exchange website, under shareholding pattern, and both exchanges keep an archive: BSE and NSE. Most companies also publish it in the investors section of their own website.
Step one: the percentage, and why it is only the start
Find the row for Promoter and Promoter Group and write down the percentage. Then find last quarter's filing and write down that one too.
Say it moved from 45.43% to 44.10%. That is a fall of 1.33 percentage points, and the wording matters. A fall of 1.33% would mean something different, a relative change, which on a holding of 45.43% would be about 0.60 percentage points. Percentage points, every time.
What the number cannot do is explain itself. A promoter holding of 52% means one thing if it has sat at 52% for eight quarters and another if it was 61% two years ago. Direction, size and reason, in that order, and the filing gives you only the first two.
Step two: the number of shares, which is the step people skip
Next to the percentage, write down the number of shares the promoter group actually holds.
This is the part that catches people out, because a percentage has a denominator. If the company issues new shares, the promoters can hold exactly what they held before and still show a lower percentage. If the company buys its own shares back and cancels them, the promoters can hold exactly what they held before and show a higher one.
| What you see | What it might mean |
|---|---|
| Percentage down, share count unchanged | The company issued shares to somebody else. The promoters did nothing. |
| Percentage down, share count down | The promoters parted with shares. Now find out how, and to whom. |
| Percentage up, share count unchanged | The share base shrank, usually a buyback. The promoters did nothing. |
| Percentage up, share count up | The promoters acquired shares. The disclosure will say how. |
Two fields, not one. That single habit prevents most of the wrong conclusions people draw from this filing.
A real case, where the arithmetic does not behave
Infosys ran a buyback in November 2025. The public announcement is specific: up to 10 crore shares, about 2.41% of the paid-up equity capital, at Rs 1,800 a share, Rs 18,000 crore in total, record date 14 November 2025. It also states that the promoter and promoter group "have expressed their intention of not participating in the Buyback".
Hold those two facts together. The company was about to retire roughly one share in forty, and the promoters were tendering none of theirs. On the arithmetic in the table above, their percentage should have gone up on its own, without them buying anything.
Now the filings. Infosys reported promoter and promoter group holding of 14.61% for the quarter ending June 2025, and 14.38% for the quarter ending March 2026, which is after the buyback.
It went down.
Source: Infosys shareholding patterns for the quarters ending 30 June 2025 and 31 March 2026, and the buyback public announcement dated November 2025.
That is not a scandal and it is not an accusation. It is the exact moment this check earns its five minutes. The denominator moved one way, the percentage moved the other, so something else happened inside the promoter group, and the shareholding pattern does not tell you what.
What it does tell you is where to look next, which is the whole point of writing the number down rather than reading a headline about it.
See Shareholding Changes across quarters
Doing this by hand means opening two filings per company per quarter and keeping your own record between them. StockTool.AI's Shareholding Changes module puts the promoters' holding and the pledged portion side by side across quarters, so the direction is visible on one screen. The filing stays the reference point; check anything that matters in the original.
Step three: the pledged column
The same table carries a column for shares pledged or otherwise encumbered. It is the most consequential number on the page and the one most quick checks miss.
A promoter holding that has not moved at all can sit behind a pledged portion that has gone from 8% to 40% of their holding, and the percentage you wrote down in step one would not have flickered.
Write it down as a share of the promoters' own holding, not of the company. We explained what a pledge is, and when it starts to matter, in What Promoter Pledging Means.
Step four: the group, not the name
A promoter group is rarely one person. It can hold shares through individuals, family companies, trusts and holding entities, each on its own row.
A group total that looks flat can hide one entity selling and another buying. So take the group total, and then run your eye down the rows for any entity whose number changed. That is usually where the story is, and it is usually a transfer between family entities rather than anything more.
A fall is not a red flag by itself
This is where these checks most often go wrong.
A lower promoter percentage does not tell you the business is in trouble. It could be a new issue of shares, an employee stock plan vesting, a transfer inside the family, a reclassification, or a sale. A higher percentage does not tell you the business has improved either.
So do not write "promoter holding fell, something is wrong". Write "promoter holding fell 1.33 percentage points, share count fell too, find the disclosure". One of those sentences is a conclusion you cannot support. The other is the next thing to do.
Where the explanation lives
When the number moves, the reason is in a different filing. In the order you should look:
- Insider trading disclosures, if someone in the promoter group traded more than ten lakh rupees of shares in the quarter.
- Substantial acquisition disclosures, if any holding crossed 5%, or moved by 2% or more after that.
- Encumbrance disclosures, if shares were pledged, released or invoked.
- The corporate action filings: a new issue, a bonus, a buyback, a scheme of arrangement.
- The outcome of the board meeting that approved whichever of those it was.
Each of those is a different filing type with its own name on the exchange feed. We set them all out in Every Common BSE Filing Type, Explained in One Line.
The five-minute worksheet
| Field | Where it comes from |
|---|---|
| Quarter | The filing you are reading |
| Promoter and promoter group, % | Summary table, promoter row |
| Promoter and promoter group, shares | Same row, share count column |
| Change since last quarter, in percentage points | Your own last entry |
| Pledged or encumbered, as a share of promoter holding | Encumbrance column |
| Any single entity whose holding moved | The detailed promoter table |
| The filing that explains it | Insider, acquisition, encumbrance or corporate action |
Seven fields, the same seven every quarter. Consistency is what turns four filings into a picture, and it takes longer to read this sentence than to fill the row in.
The short version
Percentage, share count, pledged portion, and the quarter before. If any of the three numbers moved, go and find the filing that says why, and write its name in the last column.
You are not trying to work out what the promoters are thinking. You are reading a quarterly disclosure and following the paper trail behind a number that changed. On the Infosys example above, five minutes gets you to a precise question, and a precise question is worth more than a confident answer.
Disclaimer
StockTool.AI is a research and information platform and is not a SEBI-registered investment adviser or research analyst. Its AI-generated insights are based on public filings, transcripts, annual reports and other publicly available information. Summaries may not be exhaustive or error-free, and the original source document governs. Nothing here is investment advice or a recommendation to buy, sell or hold any security. Any decision taken on the basis of this information is the reader's own. Investments in securities are subject to market risks.