How to Find Market Price Per Share

If you are interested in investing in stocks, you need to understand how to evaluate the value of a company. One way to do that is to look at the market price per share, which is the current price that investors are willing to pay for a share of the company’s stock.

In this article, we will explain what the market price per share is, how to find market price per share, and why it is important for investors to know.

How to Calculate Market Price per Share

Market price per share is basically the amount of money that people are willing to pay for one share of a company’s stock.

It changes all the time depending on supply and demand, but you can find the current market price per share by:

1. Looking at the stock’s quote online
2. In your investment app,
3. Manually calculating it using the company’s reports (will most likely be outdated)
4. The more old-school way – the newspaper.

Let’s say you want to know the current market price per share of Apple (AAPL) stock. All you need to do is just type “Apple stock” in Google and it’ll pull up the price for you.

But how do you figure out the market price per share if you don’t have access to the stock quote?

Well, there’s a formula you can use that involves some other information that you can get from the company’s financial reports. The formula is:

Market price per share = Market capitalization / Number of outstanding shares

Market capitalization is the total value of all the shares of a company in the market. You can calculate it by multiplying the current market price per share by the number of outstanding shares.

Number of outstanding shares is the number of shares that are owned by investors and available for trading. You can find it on the company’s balance sheet or income statement.

Let’s try an example. Suppose you want to know the market price per share of Apple which has a market capitalization of $10 billion and 200 million outstanding shares. To find the market price per share, you just plug in the numbers into the formula:

Market price per share = $10 billion / 200 million
Market price per share = $50

So, one share of this company’s stock would cost you $50 at the current market price. Pretty cool, right?

Of course, this is just an estimate as the company only releases quarterly reports through a 10-Q so you may not get the most up-to-date numbers, and the actual market price may vary depending on other factors, but it gives you a good idea of how much a company is worth per share.

Factors that Affect Market Price per Share

One of the main factors that affect the market price per share of a company is the balance between supply and demand. Supply is the number of shares that are available for sale, while demand is the number of shares that investors want to buy.

When supply exceeds demand, the price goes down. When demand exceeds supply, the price goes up.

The supply and demand of a company’s shares are influenced by various factors, such as:

• The company’s performance in terms of revenue, earnings, growth, innovation, etc.
• Industry trends
• Investor sentiment
• Options positioning
• Corporate actions like share buybacks and issuance, etc.

Why Understanding Market Price per Share is Important

So why does this matter? Because the market price per share tells you how much a company is worth in the eyes of investors.

You can use it to calculate a company’s market capitalization, which is the total value of all its shares. Market capitalization is one way to measure how big and successful a company is compared to others.

Once you know what the market is pricing the shares for, you can then determine if that price is over- or undervalued. Some of the most popular methods of valuations are:

• Dividend Discount Model (DDM)
• FCF model
• Price multiples like P/E, P/B, P/S, P/OCF, EV/EBITDA
• Residual income valuation

The definition and method of calculation for each of these valuation tools are wayyy outside the scope of this article but they’re some ways to benchmark against the market price per share.

Conclusion

To sum up, finding the market price per share of a company is a useful way to evaluate a company and compare it with other companies in the same industry. You can find the market price per share easily online or calculate by hand using the company’s financial statements. The market price per share can change over time depending on the supply and demand of the stock and is important to keep track of the market price per share to make informed investment decisions!