Definitions for "shares outstanding"
The shares of a corporations stock that have been issued and are in the hands of the public. also called outstanding stock.
The number of authorized shares that have been issued and are now in the hands of owners.
The Shares Outstanding (SHO) value contains the number of shares of outstanding stock held by shareholders. The SHO value represents the number of shares outstanding on a security basis; i.e., multiple classes of a company's stock are not combined. If the data vendor on the ex-date of a stock split or stock dividend does not provide a revised SHO value, the adjustment factor associated with the stock split or stock dividend is automatically applied to the SHO.