AES is a holding company. Through its subsidiaries, Co. operates a portfolio of electricity generation and distribution businesses. The first business line is generation, where Co. owns and/or operates power plants to generate and sell power to customers, such as utilities, industrial users, and other intermediaries. The second business line is utilities, where Co. owns and/or operates utilities to generate or purchase, distribute, transmit and sell electricity to end-user customers in the residential, commercial, industrial and governmental sectors within a defined service area. In certain circumstances, Co.'s utilities also generate and sell electricity on the wholesale market. We show 38 historical shares outstanding datapoints in our AES shares outstanding history coverage, used to compute AES market cap on those dates.
Understanding the changing numbers of shares outstanding, the changing
share price, and the resulting changing AES market cap history over the course of time is important for investors
interested in comparing AES's market cap history versus its peers.
Many "beginner" or "novice" investors will look at one stock trading at a price of $10 per share and another trading at
a price of $20 per share and think the latter company is worth twice as much. Of course, that is a completely meaningless comparison without also knowing how many shares outstanding there are for each of the two companies,
and then calculating their respective market caps. Comparing the share price of AES versus a peer is one thing; comparing
AES market cap versus a peer is a completely different story.
Furthermore, via fluctuation both in per-share price and in the number of shares outstanding (via issuance of new shares over time, the repurchase of existing shares),
the market cap for a company like AES can fluctuate over the course of history.
With this page we aim to empower investors researching AES by allowing them to research the AES market cap history. |
Video: The Importance of Market Cap
