Explore how corporations authorize and calculate issued shares through market cap and balance sheet methods. Discover how firms disclose this crucial information.

The market capitalization method One simple calculation for the number of shares in a firm comes from readily available information on a stock's market capitalization.

The article How to Calculate a Company's Weighted Average Number of Outstanding Shares originally appeared on Fool.com. Try any of our Foolish newsletter services free for 30 days .

How to calculate outstanding shares Of these terms, the two that you need in order to determine the number of outstanding shares are issued shares and treasury shares.