Shares outstanding

Shares outstanding is the total number of common shares currently issued and held by all shareholders. The 'basic' count includes only common shares actually issued; the 'diluted' count assumes all in-the-money options, RSUs, and convertibles have been exercised, and is the standard count used in valuation. The diluted share count drifts higher in normal operation as employee equity awards vest, and lower when buybacks retire more shares than SBC creates. We pull the diluted share count from the most recent 10-Q rather than the trailing-twelve-month weighted average, because for valuation we want the current share-count snapshot, not a backward-looking average. For companies with active capital-structure activity (large M&A, equity issuance, convertible-debt amortization), we project forward share counts explicitly in our models rather than relying on the trailing figure.