Читать книгу Corporate Finance For Dummies - Michael Taillard - Страница 67

Raising money by selling shares of equity is a little more complicated both in theory and in practice than borrowing money using loans. What you are actually doing when you sell equity is selling bits of ownership in a company. Ownership of the company is split up into shares called stock. People only buy stocks when they are excited by the things they hear about them, so your story has to be particularly good when compared to the relatively number-driven world of loans. Although it is illegal to say anything fictional, it is common to share a company’s vision of their future with potential investors, providing a bigger emotional impact.

When you own stock in a company, you own a part of that company equal to the proportion of the number of shares of stock you own compared to the total number of stock shares. For example, if a company has 1,000 shares of stock outstanding (meaning that this is the total number of shares of stock that make up the entire company) and you own one share, then you own 0.1 percent of that company, including any profits or losses it experiences (because profits belong to the owners of the company). So, when you sell equity to raise cash, what you’re really selling are the rights to a certain amount of control over how the company is managed in addition to your rights to the future profits of that company.