Learn · Explainer

Market cap and enterprise value

Share price times shares outstanding, and what changes when you add debt and take out cash.

The formulas

Market cap = share price × shares outstanding
Enterprise value ≈ market cap + debt − cash

Market cap moves with the share price every trading day, which is why Ticker Sage doesn't publish it: it would need a live price. The share count changes much more slowly, as companies issue shares and buy them back, and it's in every 10-K and 10-Q.

Which share count to use

There are two counts in a 10-K, and they answer different questions:

• Shares outstanding on the cover page, as of a recent date. This is the count for market cap. Apple's 10-K reports 14.78B as of Oct 17, 2025.
• Weighted average diluted shares on the income statement, averaged over the fiscal year and including shares that options and awards could add. That's the count for earnings per share. Apple's was 15.00B for fiscal 2025, higher than the cover count: it's an average over a year in which Apple kept buying back shares, and it includes shares from stock awards.

Source: Apple 10-K for fiscal 2025, filed Oct 31, 2025

Enterprise value: adding debt, taking out cash

Enterprise value tries to measure the whole business, not only the shares. Someone buying the entire company would take on its debt and get its cash, so the idea is to add the first and subtract the second.

At fiscal 2025 year end, Apple had long-term debt of $78.3B and cash and cash equivalents of $35.9B. Debt minus cash comes to about $42.4B, so on these two lines Apple's enterprise value is about that much higher than its market cap at any share price.

That's a simplified version. Fuller calculations also add debt due within a year, leases and preferred stock, and many subtract short-term and long-term investments along with cash. Apple holds large amounts of marketable securities outside "cash and cash equivalents", which is one reason different sources quote different enterprise values for the same company on the same day.

When cash is bigger than debt

Nvidia ended fiscal 2026 with cash and cash equivalents of $10.6B and long-term debt of $7.5B. With more cash than debt, its enterprise value on these two lines is below its market cap.

Source: Nvidia 10-K for fiscal 2026, filed Feb 25, 2026

What each measure is used for

• Market cap is the usual way to say how big a company is in stock market terms, and it's what index weights and "large-cap" labels are based on.
• Enterprise value is the numerator of ratios such as EV to EBITDA and EV to sales, which compare companies with different amounts of debt on a more even footing than the P/E ratio does.

Neither one says whether a company's shares are worth their price. They describe the price, multiplied out.

Share counts, debt and cash for 47 companies

Shares from the cover page of each company's latest 10-K; debt and cash from its balance sheet at fiscal year end. Market cap is the share count times a share price, so each $1 of share price adds the share count in dollars. Long-term debt is the figure each company tags in its filing; most report the part due after one year, a few report the total. Banks are left out. A negative last column means cash is larger than long-term debt.

More in Learn and Tools · Methodology & Disclosures explains where every number comes from.