Common Stock

Category

Balance Sheet

Units

Currency

US-GAAP elements

CommonStockValueCommonStocksIncludingAdditionalPaidInCapitalCommonStockSharesIssued

Reference

Regulation S-X Rule 5-02.29 (Common stocks)

Source

Reported in SEC EDGAR filings (US-GAAP XBRL taxonomy)

Common stock, as a balance-sheet line, is the par or stated value of all common shares a company has issued. It is the legal-capital portion of what shareholders paid for their shares; any amount paid above par is recorded separately as additional paid-in capital.

Because par values are usually tiny, often a penny or a fraction of a cent per share, the common stock line is typically small even at companies that have raised large sums. It changes only when shares are issued, retired, or split in ways that affect total par. Shares bought back and held in treasury normally remain in this figure, with their cost deducted elsewhere in equity.

Regulation S-X Rule 5-02.29 requires each class of common stock to be shown on the face of the balance sheet with the number of shares issued or outstanding and the dollar amount. The title of the issue, the number of shares authorized, and the terms of any conversion feature must be given on the balance sheet or in a note, and changes in each class must be shown for each period presented. In XBRL filings the dollar amount is tagged CommonStockValue, and the share count is tagged CommonStockSharesIssued. Companies without par value stock, or those that combine the two captions, often use CommonStocksIncludingAdditionalPaidInCapital instead.

Presentation differs across companies. Some state no par value and record the whole issuance price in common stock. Others present common stock and additional paid-in capital as one line, which Rule 5-02.30 permits. Companies with more than one class, such as those with separate voting and non-voting shares, report each class separately.

On its own, the dollar amount of common stock tells an investor little, because par value is an arbitrary legal figure unrelated to market price. The useful information sits alongside it: the number of shares issued, outstanding, and authorized. Analysts use those counts to measure dilution, to calculate per-share figures, and to see how much room a company has to issue new shares without asking shareholders to authorize more.