How can I find out what percentage the publicly traded shares (float) are of the total company?
I think you're looking for the public float: Public float or the unqualified term may also refer to the number of   outstanding shares in the hands of public investors as opposed to   company officers, directors, or controlling-interest investors.   Assuming the insider held shares are not traded, these shares are the   publicly traded ones. The float is calculated by subtracting   restricted shares from outstanding shares. As mentioned, Treasury stock is probably the most narrow definition of restricted stock (not publicly traded), but shares held by corporate officers or majority investors are often included in the definition as well. In any case, the balance sheet is indeed a good place to start. "The best place to start looking is the companies ""Balance Sheet"" (B/S).  This would show you the total shares ""outstanding."" The quarterly B/S's arent audited but a good starting point.  To use in any quant method, You also need to look a growth the outstanding shares number. Company can issue shares to any employee without making a filing.  Also, YOU will NEVER know exactly the total number because of stock options that are issued to employees that are out of the money arent account for. Some companies account for these, some dont.  You should also explore the concepts of ""fully dilute"" shares and ""basis"" shares. These concepts will throw-off your calc if the company has convertible bonds."
"I think the key concept here is future value.  The NAV is essentially a book-keeping exercise- you add up all the assets and remove all the liabilities.  For a public company this is spelled out in the balance sheet, and is generally listed at the bottom.  I pulled a recent one from Cisco Systems (because I used to work there and know the numbers  ;-) and you can see it here: roughly $56 billion... https://finance.yahoo.com/q/bs?s=CSCO+Balance+Sheet&annual  Another way to think about it: In theory (and we know about this, right?) the NAV is what you would get if you liquidated the company instantaneously.  A definition I like to use for market cap is ""the current assets, plus the perceived present value of all future earnings for the company""... so let's dissect that a little.  The term ""present value"" is really important, because a million dollars today is worth more than a million dollars next year.  A company expected to make a lot of money soon will be worth more (i.e. a higher market cap) than a company expected to make the same amount of money, but later.  The ""all future earnings"" part is exactly what it sounds like.  So again, following our cisco example, the current market cap is ~142 billion, which means that ""the market"" thinks they will earn about $85 billion over the life of the company (in present day dollars)." "I can see two possibilities. Either a deal is struck that someone (the company itself, or a large owner) buys out the remaining shares. This is the scenario @mbhunter is talking about, so I won't go too deeply into it, but it simply means that you get money in your bank account for the shares in question the same as if you were to sell them for that price (in turn possibly triggering tax effects, etc.). I imagine that this is by far the most common approach. The other possibility is that the stock is simply de-listed from a public stock exchange, and not re-listed elsewhere. In this case, you will still have the stock, and it will represent the same thing (a portion of the company), but you will lose out on most of the ""market"" part of ""stock market"". That is, the shares will still represent a monetary value, you will have the same right to a portion of the company's profits as you do now, etc., but you will not have the benefit of the market setting a price per share so current valuation will be harder. Should you wish to buy or sell stock, you will have to find someone yourself who is interested in striking a deal with you at a price point that you feel comfortable with." "A company whose stock is available for sale to the public is called a publicly-held or publicly-traded company.  A public company's stock is sold on a stock exchange, and anyone with money can buy shares through a stock broker. This contrasts with a privately-held company, in which the shares are not traded on a stock exchange. In order to invest in a private company, you would need to talk directly to the current owners of the company. Finding out if a company is public or private is fairly easy.  One way to check this is to look at the Wikipedia page for the company.  For example, if you take a look at the Apple page, on the right sidebar you'll see ""Type: Public"", followed by the stock exchange ticker symbol ""AAPL"".  Compare this to the page for Mars, Inc.; on that page, you'll see ""Type: Private"", and no stock ticker symbol listed. Another way to tell: If you can find a quote for a share price on a financial site (such as Google Finance or Yahoo Finance), you can buy the stock.  You won't find a stock price for Mars, Inc. anywhere, because the stock is not publicly traded." Does Coke count as one of his operating businesses though?  He's the biggest shareholder but wikipedia says it's around 26%.  There are some other huge cash cows in there as well; BNSF Railroad's earnings were like $3.5 billion last year, and Berkshire own 100% of the business. Your gain is $1408. The difference between 32% of your gain and 15% of your gain is $236.36 or $1.60 per share. If you sell now, you have $3957.44 after taxes.  Forget about the ESPP for a moment. Are you be willing to wager $4000 on the proposition that your company's stock price won't go down more than $1.60 or so over the next 18 months? I've never felt it was worth it. Also, I never thought it made much sense to own any of my employer's stock. If their business does poorly, I'd prefer not to have both my job and my money at risk. If you sell now: Now assuming you hold for 18 months, pay 15% capital gains tax, and the stock price drops by $1.60 to $23.40: "Will the investment bank evaluate the worth of my company more than or less than 50 crs. Assuming the salvage value of the assets of 50 crs (meaning that's what you could sell them for to someone else), that would be the minimum value of your company (less any outstanding debts). There are many ways to calculate the ""value"" of a company, but the most common one is to look at the future potential for generating cash.   The underwriters will look at what your current cash flow projections are, and what they will be when you invest the proceeds from the public offering back into the company.  That will then be used to determine the total value of the company, and in turn the value of the portion that you are taking public. And what will be the owner’s share in the resulting public company? That's completely up to you.  You're essentially selling a part of the company in order to bring cash in, presumably to invest in assets that will generate more cash in the future.  If you want to keep complete control of the company, then you'll want to sell less than 50% of the company, otherwise you can sell as much or as little as you want." "1. Most of the information you want can be found in the annual report of the company. Go to their official website, look for shareholders information and then download the annual report. This will answer: ""number of issued stock, voting rights, if there is more than one kind of stock, etc. In summary all the legal and formal details of a given stock. 2. After reading the annual report, check on investors websites to see if you can find analyst reports written on this company. You can sometimes find them in some free newsletters. These reports will complete the information you have found in the annual report like ""if the dividends are always paid, etc.""" A company is basically divided into shit the company owns (assets) and shit the company owes to people (liabilities). So what about ownership? Ownership is called equity and on a simplistic level equity = asset - liabilities. But a better view of that should be asset = liabilities + equity. Which means a company's assets  is separated into things owned by debtors (e.g. Banks) and things owned by owners(founders and you). So when you are offered one percent, you are basically owning one percent of the company.   Not the best explanation, but should be a simplified one.   Here's where the options come in. When you are offered options. That means you have the option of redeeming the shares at a lower price than market. However these options are not usually immediately redeemable, there's usually a minimum amount of time you have to work at a company to be able to use these options. This period is called the vesting period. This is in the balance sheet, but the info is not usually that detailed. It is safe to assume that at least some portion of the cash/cash equivalents will be in liquid bonds. You may find more specific details in the company SEC filings (annual reports etc). See this link...I was also looking an answer to the same questions. This site explains with an example  http://www.independent-stock-investing.com/PE-Ratio.html What I do have is this (sample only): Stock X: Average Price of all I purchased before = 80 Total Shares = 200 So if Stock X's price today is 100 how do I know how much my average price will be? Using your sample if you buy 100 new shares and the price is 85 for the purpose of this example your previous total cost is $16,000 ($80 average cost * 200 shares).  With the new example you are adding $8500 to your total cost (100 new shares * $85 example cost per share)  that gives us a total cost of $24,500 and 300 shares. $24,500/300 gives us an average cost of $81.67 per share. As long as you have the average cost and the number of shares you can calculate a new average without knowing what the price was for each transaction. It may still become important to find the price information for tax purposes if you do not sell all of those shares at once and use FIFO for your taxes. Everyone that owns a share of stock in a company is part owner. Some just own more than others. According to Apple's latest proxy statement he owns 5.5 million shares of the 914 million shares outstanding. So he owns approximately 0.6% of the company.  If he owned more than 50% of the company's outstanding stock he would effectively control the board of directors by being able to pick whoever he wanted.  Then he would control the company. Very few publicly traded companies are that way. Most have sold off parts of the company to the public in order to raise cash for the company and make their investment more liquid. "Note that these used to be a single ""common"" share that has ""split"" (actually a ""special dividend"" but effectively a split). If you owned one share of Google before the split, you had one share giving you X worth of equity in the company and 1 vote. After the split you have two shares giving you the same X worth of equity and 1 vote. In other words, zero change. Buy or sell either depending on how much you value the vote and how much you think others will pay (or not) for that vote in the future.  As Google issues new shares, it'll likely issue more of the new non-voting shares meaning dilution of equity but not dilution of voting power. For most of us, our few votes count for nothing so evaluate this as you will.  Google's founders believe they can do a better job running the company long-term when there are fewer pressures from outside holders who may have only short-term interests in mind. If you disagree, or if you are only interested in the short-term, you probably shouldn't be an owner of Google. As always, evaluate the facts for yourself, your situation, and your beliefs." "(Value of shares+Dividends received)/(Initial investment) would be the typical formula though this is more of a percentage where 1 would indicate that you broke even, assuming no inflation to be factored. No, you don't have to estimate the share price based on revenues as I would question how well did anyone estimate what kind of revenues Facebook, Apple, or Google have had and will have. To estimate the value of shares, I'd likely consider what does my investment strategy use as metrics: Is it discounted cash flow, is it based on earnings, is it something else? There are many ways to determine what a stock ""should be worth"" that depending on what you want to believe there are more than a few ways one could go." A public company should have a link for investor relations, which should help provide a trail of basis if this is a matter of company buyout, takeover, etc.  This gets you close, but if you don't have an exact date, it will just be close, not exact.  One clean way out of this, assuming the goal is to get rid of the stock and move on, is to donate the shares to charity. You will take the present value as a deduction, and be done. You can use a charitable gift fund such as those offered by Schwab or Fidelity, so if say, the shares are worth $20K, and you typically donate $5K per year, the fund lets you do this transaction at once, then send to the charities you wish over the next few years.