Non-financial data, where this is not self-explanatory, is described below in alphabetical order.

Calendar

We show when the company will next report results and the date of the next AGM (annual general meeting). We try to get dates from companies, but most are reluctant to commit themselves too far ahead of time. In this case we use our historical records to estimate a release date, shown as Unconfirmed.

Sometimes the company will provide an approximate date, shown as Estimate. Confirmed means a date confirmed by the company, but this is not always an absolute guarantee that results will be released on that day.

Non-disclosure means that we have been unable to get any information from the company and we cannot make a valid estimate from previous data (typically because we are beyond the company's previous reporting date or because the company changed its year end).

Directors

Directors are usually listed in order of Chairman, Deputy Chairman, CEO/MD, and the balance in alphabetical order. The abbreviation (ne) indicates a non-executive director, and (alt) indicates an alternate director. For foreign nationals the director's nationality appears in italics.

Liquidity

This is the percentage of the company's issued shares that have changed hands in the period up to the latest financials. If the most recent results are interims or quarterlies, the volume of shares traded is annualised. The RandVal traded/week is a further indication of the share's liquidity, and gives a much quicker impression of the share's capacity to absorb purchases and withstand impact costs.

Major Shareholders

We rely on listed companies to supply us with these details. This has the distinct advantage that most major holdings show the ultimate beneficial holder. However, not all listed companies are prepared to provide this information. Controlled by is also the company's own assessment of the ultimate controlling shareholder, and not an independent opinion.

Nature of Business

The Summary Fact Sheet for each company usually provides a brief nature of business as described in the statutory format in the company's annual report. The Detailed Fact Sheet for each company provides a more detailed description either drawn up by ProfileData Research or provided by the company.

Volatility

This is a measure of the inherent risk of the share, and literally measures how much the shares go up and down in price (cf beta, which is a measure of risk relative to a benchmark). We use the standard deviation of the month-on-month percentage price change, usually over a 36-month period. All other things being equal, the higher this figure, the riskier the share. A figure of 12.5 tells you that, two-thirds of the time, the month-end price change was within 12.5% of the average month-on-month price change (either up or down), and that 95% of the time, the price change was within 25% (double 12.5%) either up or down. Put more simply, 12.5 means the share was within a 25% "band" around the price change average two-thirds of the time, and within a 50% band about 95% of the time.

Capital Structure

ShareData shows the authorised shares and outstanding shares for each class of security issued by the company. "Issued shares" (or shares outstanding) is the actual number of shares in the hands of shareholders – market capitalisation is obtained by multiplying this figure by the share price. Issued shares are a sub-set of authorised shares. The latter figure denotes the maximum number of shares that could be issued under the current capital structure. The difference between authorised and issued shares is the number of shares not yet issued. (This does not mean that the company will keep issuing shares until the authorised threshold is reached – a large portion of authorised shares usually remains unallocated.)

Note that warrants and other derivative instruments (like options and CFDs) are not part of the capital structure of a company.

Dividends

A full dividend history for each security issued by each listed company is available in ShareData. Dividend tables go back as far as 1990 (subject to data availability). Dividend data includes the dividend declaration date, the last day to trade (LDT), the payment date, the dividend amount (in cents per share) and the currency. The ex-div date is not shown as this is always the trading day that falls immediately after the LDT. Where shareholders were given an option to receive shares rather than cash, the dividend is shown as a ratio per hundred ordinary shares (under the heading Scrip/100).

Note that dividends are adjusted historically in the event of share splits or share consolidations in order to keep past dividends in sync with the current share price.