What dilution risk actually measures
Every company page on this site leads with one number: worst-case dilution. It answers a blunt question — if every option, warrant, performance right and convertible on the register turned into ordinary shares tomorrow, how much bigger would the share count be?
A company with 100M shares on issue and 80M instruments outstanding has a worst-case dilution of 80%. Whoever owns 1% of that company today owns 0.56% of the fully diluted company. Nothing needs to go wrong for this to matter; it is already written into the register.
Why registers keep growing
The listing rules make growth the default. Under Listing Rule 7.1, an ASX company can issue up to 15% of its share count every rolling 12 months without asking holders. Smaller companies — under $300M market cap and outside the S&P/ASX 300 — can add a further 10% under rule 7.1A with a single vote at their AGM. A small cap can therefore expand its capital base by roughly a quarter, year after year, without a general meeting ever being called about any specific raise. Placements come with attaching options, directors are paid in performance rights, loans convert into notes — each filing adds a line to the register, and the lines accumulate faster than they expire.
Why rallies fade
Options only convert when they are in the money — when the share price exceeds the strike. That creates a mechanical pattern:
- The price rallies on news.
- Options that were worthless yesterday are suddenly exercisable at a profit.
- Holders exercise and sell, adding supply exactly when demand appeared.
- The rally meets a wall of new shares and fades.
The numbers on a company page
- Basic SOI — ordinary shares on issue today, from the most recent filing.
- FD SOI — basic plus every dilutive instrument on the register.
- Overhang — supply that is realistically convertible near the current price: options within 30% of spot, all performance rights, and broker paper.
- Expiry cliffs — when the paper can arrive, bucketed by quarter. Options often sell off ahead of the expiry quarter, not after it.
- Cash runway — quarters of cash left at the current burn rate, from the quarterly cash flow report (Appendix 4C, or 5B for miners). A short runway plus a large register usually means the register is about to get larger.
Worst case versus TSM
Worst-case counts every in-the-money instrument at full size. The treasury stock method (TSM) assumes the cash paid on exercise buys back shares at the market price, so it counts only the net new supply.
Take 10M options struck at $0.10 with the shares at $0.20. Worst case counts all 10M. TSM notes that exercise raises $1.0M, which buys back 5M shares at $0.20 — so the net addition is 5M, exactly half. The gap between the two methods widens as the strike falls: free paper is identical under both, while barely-in-the-money paper nearly vanishes under TSM. TSM is what accountants report; worst case is what the order book feels. We show both — the toggle is on every company page.
Every figure is extracted from public filings and linked back to its source document, so you can verify any number in the original PDF in two clicks — start from the screener.