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The owners’ equity portion of the balance sheet breaks down exactly what value the company has to its owners and how that value is allocated to them. The amount of value that investors have in a corporation is equivalent to the amount of total assets the company has minus its total liabilities.

This section goes over the subsections that fall under the owners’ equity portion of the balance sheet. The first three cover different types of stock, while the last three go over other types of earnings and income.

Company ownership is measured in shares of stock, but the types of stock vary. The first one listed on the balance sheet is called preferred shares. Preferred shares take precedence over all other types of stock in several different ways. First of all, preferred stockholders are guaranteed dividends, which means they always get their payments before common shareholders get theirs (see the next section). If the preferred holders don’t get their guaranteed dividends one year, those dividends accumulate into the next year. Holders of preferred shares also get their full value in the liquidation of the company should it go out of business before holders of common shares get anything. Some types of preferred shares can be converted into common shares.