Shares Outstanding

[SHERZ out-STAN-ding]

What is the definition of Shares Outstanding?

The total number of shares of a company that have been issued and are currently held by investors, including shares held by institutional investors and restricted shares held by company insiders and officers.

Using Shares Outstanding in an Example

If a company has 1,000,000 shares outstanding and decides to issue 500,000 more shares, the total shares outstanding would increase to 1,500,000. These shares represent the portion of the company's ownership that is distributed among all its shareholders.

Using Shares Outstanding in a sentence

During the quarterly financial review, the CFO updated the board on the number of shares outstanding, which had increased following a recent stock issuance.

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