[jorden_rowrow]

The following information pertains to Ceil Co., a company whose common stock trades in a public market:

Shares outstanding at 1/1= 100,000

Stock dividend at 3/31= 24,000

Stock issuance at 6/30= 5,000

What is the weighted-average number of shares Ceil should use to calculate its basic earnings per share for the year ended December 31?

a. 123,000

b. 129,000

c. 120,500

d. 126,500

the correct answer is d and my question is how did they get this?

The way I calculated was: 100,000 * (3/12)= 25,000 3 months until 3/31 + 124,000*(3/12)= 31,000 (3 months until 6/30) + 129,000*1/2 (6 months until you get till december= 120,500. It seems like I am screwing up somewhere, an someone explain it to me

[tomtraption]

When there is a stock dividend, you increase the shares outstanding into the future and into the past, because we want to keep things apples-to-apples.

One share before the stock dividend is equal to 1.24 shares after the stock dividend. So, when we calculate the average shares outstanding, we do so on the “1.24 basis” so to speak. So we consider there to be 124k shares outstanding between 1/1 and 6/30.

So its (100+24) * 6/12 + (124+5) * 6/12 = 126.5

BS Accounting student at Western Governors University
Expected graduation December 2016

[Anonymous]

exam nugget: stock dividends AND stock splits are tereated as if they occurred at the beginning of the year for purposes of weighted average shares outstanding (the denominator of the EPS calculation)

[Grey Worm]

using your method the formula would look like:

(100,000 + 24,000) * (6/12) = 62,000
(100,000 + 24,000 + 5,000) * (6/12) = 64,500
62,000 + 64,500 = 126,500

like @eesti said, treat splits and dividends as if they are retroactively applied to the entire year.

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