What are the retained earnings in..?

Question

On January 1, 2007, Aglar Corporation had these stockholders' equity accounts.

Common Stock ($10 par value, 60,000 shares issued and outstanding) $600,000

Paid-in Capital in Excess of Par Value 500,000

Retained Earnings 620,000

During the year, the following transactions occurred.

Dec. 1 Declared a $0.55 per share dividend to stockholders of record on December 15, payable January 10, 2008.

This the entry but i dont know the numbers

RETAINED EARNINGS

--- DIVIDENS PAYABLE

ANOTHER QUESTION

How can i find the outstanding shares? THANKS FOR YOUR HELP

Answer 1

"Aglar Corp"?

Unless you misspelled it, or it is not a US company, I suspect you are talking of a hypothetical company.

Usually, the brokerage and business news sites will be able to connect you with data on a company. Often, the company provides that information at an "investors" tab or link from their website. Commonly, publicly-traded companies, including many bulletin board and "pink sheets", will send reports to the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). The SEC will let you look at this data (as will most brokerages and many of the better business websites) through their EDGAR, or FreeEdgar website.

Now to your original question, retained earnings are the after-tax profits that the company has made but not paid out in dividends to stockholders. That is money that is plowed back into the business or sometimes held in reserve for future need, just as we might personally keep a savings stash or set aside money for a big accquistion that we would rather not finance.

As for outstanding shares, that will be included along with all the other common figures reported. For instance, my broker's website will give me EPS (earnings per share) invormation, along with market capitalization (outsanding shares times the recent price), so they usually spell out the number of outstanding shares in order to provide perspective to the EPS number and as a check on their market capitalization value. You multiply the EPS times the number of outstanding shares and see what kind of total profit the company experienced. If nothing else, when you get to the equity section of the balance sheet, there will be a number or numbers, especially if there are multiple classes of common stock and several editions of preferred shares as well.

Answer 2

ot states that there re 60000 shares outstanding and each of them would have received .55 dividend so 60000*.55 would be your dividend payable.