Calculating company-level market capitalisations from share quantities and values

Question

I want to calculate company-level market cap values for stock exchanges listed by Bloomberg. I gather this can be calculated as the product of share price and the total of shares in circulation. But this approach does not seem to add up: for example the London Stock Exchange's data on FTSE100 members (see their 'List of All Companies') gives a £9,521.4 million cap value for Pearson, but calculating for this company from Bloomberg stats yields £2,796m (£1,331.00 * 2.1m shares).

Can anyone possibly clarify what the LSE figure is based on? I'm not an economist or finance expert but need reliable data on company cap values around the world. I'd prefer to get this centrally from somewhere like Bloomberg than interrogate 50+ exchange websites! So alternatively it would be really helpful to know of a better way to get this data.

Thanks in advance.

Answer 1

I think you are misinterpreting the data.

Right now, looking at Bloomberg webpage, the Market Cap of Pearson is 11.142,56(M). This figure has been obtained looking at the heading Market Cap (M GBP).

Alternative, if you go through the Number of Shares x Share Price route, using the same Bloomberg webpage, you obtain: Shares Outstanding (M) x Current Share Price = 817.50 (M) * £13,65 = 11.158.88(M), which is a similar figure.

In fact, the difference is likely due to the fact that Bloomberg webpage is not reporting real time or exact figures for Shares Outstanding and Current Share Price.

Looking at a Bloomberg terminal, the number of shares outstanding is 817.502.853, and the current share price is £13,63, which yield a Market Cap of: 11.142.564.453 or 11.142,56 millions.

So in short: yes, you can obtain Market Caps directly from the Bloomberg webpage, but you need to look at the correct heading.