Shares outstanding are all the shares of a

corporation A corporation or body corporate is an individual or a group of people, such as an association or company, that has been authorized by the State (polity), state to act as a single entity (a legal entity recognized by private and public law as ...

that have been authorized, issued and purchased by investors and are held by them. They are distinguished from

treasury shares A treasury stock or reacquired stock is stock which is bought back by the issuing company, reducing the amount of outstanding stock on the open market ("open market" including insiders' holdings). Stock repurchases are used as a tax efficien ...

, which are shares held by the corporation itself, thus representing no exercisable rights. Shares outstanding and treasury shares together amount to the number of issued shares. Shares outstanding can be calculated as either basic or fully diluted. The basic count is the current number of shares.

Dividend A dividend is a distribution of profits by a corporation to its shareholders, after which the stock exchange decreases the price of the stock by the dividend to remove volatility. The market has no control over the stock price on open on the ex ...

distributions and voting in the general meeting of shareholders are calculated according to this number. The fully diluted shares outstanding count, on the other hand, includes diluting securities, such as warrants,

capital note {{Unreferenced, date=June 2019, bot=noref (GreenC bot) Capital notes are several types of securities. "Capital note" has a number of meanings, as it can be either an equity security, a debt security or a form of security used in structured finance ...

s or convertibles. If the company has any diluting securities, this indicates the potential future increased number of shares outstanding.

Finding the number of shares outstanding

The number of outstanding shares may change due to changes in the number of issued shares, as well as the change in treasury shares. Both can occur at any time of the year. There are several useful public sources to find the number of shares outstanding of a given corporation.

Public traded companies' investor relations

The financial reporting obligation of the publicly traded company also ensures the publication of issued and outstanding shares. The reports are usually available in the investor relations section of the company's website. Web directories are supporting direct access to company websites. Publicly traded companies bundle the reports in the investor relations section, e.g.

Deutsche Bank Deutsche Bank AG (, ) is a Germany, German multinational Investment banking, investment bank and financial services company headquartered in Frankfurt, Germany, and dual-listed on the Frankfurt Stock Exchange and the New York Stock Exchange. ...

, Eni S.p.a., AB InBev, EDP - Energias do Brasil SA or Accor SA.

Authorized information service

In many countries, there is an information service authorized or provided by the local financial authority which gives access to companies' financial reporting. In the United States, the number of shares outstanding may be obtained from quarterly filings with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. Quarterly filings are accessible using the US EDGAR. In Germany, those figures are available using the German company register, the central platform for storage of company data. In the Netherlands, the Netherlands Authority for the Financial Markets (AFM) provides on its website a register of issued capital. In Italy, the Commissione Nazionale per le Società e la Borsa (CONSOB) provides on its website a register of issuers with latest total shares.

Local stock exchanges

Since outstanding shares are an essential detail of publicly traded companies the number can be found on the local stock exchange websites. Beyond stock charts and listed prices, they also provide the companies' number of outstanding shares. Examples include the Brazilian BM&FBOVESPA, the Swiss SIX, the Borsa Italiana and the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange (where shares outstanding are termed "Capital Listed for Trading").

References

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