issued shares are the subset of authorized shares sold and held by the shareholders of a company whether they are insiders institutional investors or the general public this is detailed in the company s annual report issued shares include the stock a company sells publicly to generate capital and the stock given to insiders as part of their compensation packages thus authorized shares are the total number a company can ever issue or sell and issued shares are the portion of those shares that a company has sold or otherwise placed in the market including shares they hold in their treasury 
issued shares also differ from outstanding shares these are the number of shares in the market that are available for purchase by investors but do not include shares the company holds in its treasury issued shares can be contrasted with unissued ones which have been authorized for future offerings but have not yet been issued understanding issued sharesa company issues a share only once after that investors may sell it to another investor on the secondary market when companies buy back their own shares the shares remain listed as issued even though they are not classified as treasury shares because the company may resell them for a small closely held corporation the original owners may hold all the issued shares the number of issued shares is recorded on a company s balance sheet as capital stock or owners equity while the shares outstanding issued shares minus any shares in the treasury are listed on the company s quarterly filings with the securities and exchange commission the number of outstanding shares is also in the capital section of a company s annual report the number of issued and outstanding shares which is used to calculate market capitalization and earnings per share are often the same authorized shares are those a company s founders or board of directors bofd have approved in their corporate filing paperwork issued shares are those the owners have decided to sell in exchange for cash which may be less than the number of shares actually authorized shares issued generate the assets or other value for founding or developing a company for example a company may retain authorized shares to conduct a secondary offering later sometimes called a tender offer or use them for employee stock options issued shares and ownershipownership of a corporation is typically determined by examining who holds the issued shares this includes shares distributed during the company s initial startup phase or through secondary offerings one may consider not only the issued and outstanding shares but also those that could be issued in the future this broader view is captured in the fully diluted calculation which takes into account shares that would be issued if all authorized stock options and convertible securities were exercised another way for ownership to be projected is by measuring the issued and authorized stocks this approach called the working model calculation forecasts potential changes in shareholder positions based on the total number of shares a company may issue along with those already issued it s thus a speculative view of how ownership could evolve if the company fully uses its authorized share capital it s important all board members use the same calculation when making decisions or plans for the business to maintain consistency if a startup issues 10 million shares out of 20 million authorized shares to an owner and the owner s shares are the only ones issued the owner controls 100 of the corporation bofds typically use the fully diluted or working model calculation for planning and projecting for instance if the board believes it may issue two million additional shares to an investor and offers three million shares as stock options to high performing employees it might offer the founders additional stock options so they do not significantly dilute their ownership percentage issued shares vs outstanding sharesissued shares represent all the stock a company has issued outstanding shares meanwhile are the shares circulating in the market owned by investors and available for them to trade often the number of issued and outstanding shares will be the same however there are cases particularly with larger companies where not all the shares issued will be in the hands of investors for example when a company repurchases its shares they are no longer held publicly but kept in the company s treasury instead these shares would then count as issued shares but not as outstanding shares alternatively outstanding shares are issued shares minus any shares in the treasury a publicly traded company s total number of shares outstanding can usually be found on exchange platforms and in the shareholder s equity section of the company balance sheet 