Share supply & dilution

We take the company's annual share counts from its yearly filings, pair the latest year with the year closest to five back (a window between 4.5 and 5.5 years is accepted), and annualize the change: (end ÷ start)^(1/years) − 1, shown as % per year. The bar sparkline is the same series indexed to 100 at the window start.

A rising count means the company pays for things by creating new shares — each share you hold owns a shrinking slice of the business. A falling count means buybacks outrun issuance and your slice grows without you buying anything. Direction matters more than any single year.

Near zero is neutral. A +3%/yr pace shrinks your slice roughly 14% over five years. +10%/yr and up is heavy, sustained issuance. The microcap financing treadmill — sell shares, reverse-split, sell again — runs at +50–100%/yr and beyond.

Most large caps sit between −3% and +3% a year. Committed buyback programs print negative low single digits. Serial diluters reach double and triple digits.

It needs about five years of annual filings that carry a usable whole-company share count, so young listings and recent spinoffs show no value. And when consecutive annual counts jump outside a 0.5×–2.0× band — the signature of a class-level count sneaking into a multi-class filer's series — we withhold the whole read rather than serve a corrupt one.

Trailing-12-month common-stock repurchases minus issuance proceeds, both taken from the company's as-reported SEC cash-flow tags, divided by market value, as %. The gross buyback yield beside it is repurchases alone over market value — no netting.

This is the cash answer to "which way is the share count headed?" Positive = the company spends cash retiring shares. Negative = it raises cash by selling new ones, which makes existing shareholders the financing source.

+1–3% is a real buyback program. Small negatives are routine for stock-comp-heavy names. −10% and beyond means the company funds operations mainly by issuing shares to the market.

Large caps mostly −2% to +4%. Cash-burning small caps commonly print −10% to −30% in a financing year.

The net figure stays empty unless both the repurchase and the issuance tag resolve in the filing data — an empty cell means "tags missing," never "no activity." And a single tender offer or secondary can dominate one trailing window, so read it beside the 5-year pace.

Latest-fiscal-year share-based compensation divided by operating cash flow, as %. We also compute stock comp over revenue, and fit a plain trend line to that ratio over up to five fiscal years (needs at least three) to call it rising, flat or falling.

Paying people in shares is deferred dilution — the share count grows later even where buybacks mask it today. This ratio shows how much of the cash the business generates the practice offsets.

Under 5% of operating cash flow is routine. 25% and above is elevated — that is the threshold where this page tints the figure. Above 100%, stock comp exceeded every dollar of cash the business made that year.

Mature industrials run low single digits. Growth software commonly 10–40%. Pre-profit names exceed 100% regularly.

Operating cash flow near zero makes the percentage explode — a 200% reading can mean tiny cash flow rather than enormous stock comp. Check the revenue-based ratio beside it before concluding which.

The trailing five-year share-count pace, ranked cross-sectionally against every name we cover — not just industry peers. 100th percentile = the most dilutive name in coverage.

It answers "is this pace normal?" A software company diluting 4% a year through stock comp is unremarkable; the same pace at a mature industrial is a choice worth noticing.

Below the 50th percentile is better than typical. Above the 90th puts the name in the most-dilutive decile we track.

0–100 by construction; the information lives at the extremes.

The rank moves when coverage changes, and it compares across industries with different norms — the pace is the fact, the rank is only its context.

The latest fiscal year's diluted weighted-average share count minus the basic one, as % of basic — the shares already promised through options and grants but not yet issued.

It is the visible edge of committed future dilution: this part of the count grows without any new decision by management.

Under 2% is routine. 5% and above is a meaningful standing overhang.

0% up to the low teens for grant-heavy names.

Point-in-time and instrument-blind — it counts promised shares, not the strike prices or vesting schedules that decide whether and when they arrive.