Form with which a corporation may alter the amount of outstanding shares issued by the corporation.
Form with which a corporation may alter the amount of outstanding shares issued by the corporation.
What are Outstanding Shares? Outstanding shares are the total number of shares of a company's stock that are currently owned by investors, including institutional investors, insiders, and the general public. These shares are issued by the company and sold to investors, who become partial owners of the company.
At this point, you may wonder what happens when a company has attempted to issue more shares than it has authorized. Make sure this doesn't happen! If it does occur, a company has breached any agreement with those investors, employees or other parties that have been “issued” the excess shares.
Authorized stock is the max amount of shares that a company can issue. Generally, a company will not issue 100% of the authorized stock, so issued stock will be less than the authorized amount. Issued stock can be held by the company, held by employees, or held by the general public.
Authorized shares are the total number of shares a company can legally issue, while issued shares are the number the company has issued to date. The number of authorized and issued shares may be the same or different, in which case there would be more authorized than issued shares.
For example, after a company has bought back investor's stocks, the shares that have been purchased will no longer be considered outstanding shares, although they are still issued shares. You can find a company's outstanding shares count listed under Capital Stock on the company's balance sheet.