Float, Shares Out. and Clarification

PLEASE NOTE: The original post which discusses Capital Atlantic's position has been edited for accuracy below. I apologize for any confusion. This post is designed to clarify some of my points from earlier.

Since I've ranted about the float and the percentage of shares owned by Capital Atlantic Partners I thought it'd be useful to link to a nice explanation regarding the distinction between total shares outstanding and the float. You can read that here: http://tinyurl.com/6gs7l.

EPS is calculated using total outstanding shares -- and that is probably the best number to use when referring to ownership percentages. According to Y! Finance, AX has 47.14 million shares outstanding (source: http://tinyurl.com/4ltlb. So, another way of looking at CA Partners' stake is roughly 25% of all outstanding shares -- again, a considerable position by any standard!

The float changes when restricted shares are sold in the open market. Let's assume, hypothetically, that CA Partners sells all 10,000,000 shares of AX. The float would increase to 21 million shares. In that scenario, CA Partners would've owned nearly 50% of the float. My point is: CA Partners has a sizeable position and if they are selling it represents a significant percentage of the float.

Here's another way to look at it:
Last quarter, AX reported diluting earnings of $0.21/share. Multiplying CA Partners' stake by that number (10,380,000 x $0.21) we get $2,179,800 worth of earnings for CA Partners. Considering that pre-tax income for the third quarter was $15.9 million -- 13.7% of that income is represented in CA Partners' stake.
(s0urce: http://tinyurl.com/6xrpk).