Capital surplus represents an amount above the par value chosen by the company for the shares that it issued.

The lion's share of this line is generally excess paid-in capital. CompuStat's documentation says the following about what is included and excluded from this data point:

This item includes the effect of and is adjusted for:

• Capital recorded upon reorganization or re-capitalization of the company
• Donations received from stockholders
• Gain on resale or cancellation of reacquired capital stock
• installments on common stock
• Miscellaneous paid-in-capital
• Notes receivable from sale of subscription stock
• Premium on capital stock (excess over par or stated value)
• Reduction in par or stated value of capital stock
• Reserve account for shares to be repurchased (reported in the Equity section)
• Residual from conversion of a class of common into the main class
• Stock of a subsidiary held by the parent company (reported in the Equity section)
• Unrealized stock appreciation
• Deferred compensation effect when reported in the Equity section of the Balance Sheet.

This item excludes:

• Excess over par of common treasury stock, included in Treasury Stock - Total Dollar Amount
• Excess over par of nonredeemable preferred treasury stock, included in Treasury Stock - Total Dollar Amount
• Issuable stock, included in Retained Earnings
• Miscellaneous notes receivable, included in Retained Earnings
• Reserve for shares to be issued, included in Retained Earnings

In practical terms, this is the closest that we have to paid-in capital, largely because of the way that this data is reported today by companies.

Line Item Functions and Derived Factors

The data points come from SEC filings or company earnings announcements. Because our data provider standardizes financial information to make it comparable across different companies, the specific figures may not always match the original source. For a list of all our line items please refer to our Line-Item Reference Spreadsheet. 

Access Methods

There are two access methods: prebuilt factors and using a function.

Function

ItemName(offset, type[, NAHandling])

offset: 0-24 (for interim) 0-19 (for annual)
type: QTR (for interim), ANN (for annual), TTM (for trailing twelve months)
NAHandling: [FALLBACK], KEEPNA, ZERONA

For types QTR & ANN the value is taken straight out of the filing with the corresponding offset, ex: 0 is most recent, 1 is previous, etc. TTM types are computed in two ways: for income and cash flow statement values are calculated by adding four quarterly values. For balance sheet items, TTM is the average of the trailing four quarters.

Example

To screen for stocks whose trailing 12 months revenue is higher than the previous 12 months enter: Sales(0,TTM) > Sales(4,TTM) The above can also be done using prebuilt ratios: SalesTTM < SalesPTM

NA Handling

The NAHandling parameter is optional and is used to control what happens in preliminary reports where many items could be missing. Preliminary reports are press releases by the company and only affect the most recent ("0") offset period. They can last several weeks and can cause false signals due to incomplete data (see "CompleteStmt" for a way to identify companies with preliminary data).

Three options are available when an NA is found in a preliminary report: 

FALLBACK	The default setting. When an NA is encountered the value is pulled from the offset "1" period.
KEEPNA	NAs will be preserved, which can cause the entire expression to fail.
ZERONA	NAs are converted to 0

Pre-built factors

Below are the available pre-built factors for convenience with the corresponding formula parameters. Please note that availability varies by factor.

Period	Description	Corresponding Parameters
Q	Recent Quarter	(0, QTR)
PQ	Prior Quarter	(1, QTR)
PYQ	Prior Year quarter	(4, QTR)
TTM	Trailing Twelve Months	(0, TTM)
PTM	Prior Trailing Twelve Months	(4, TTM)
A	Recent Annual	(0, ANN)
PY	Prior Year	(1, ANN)
Gr%PQ	Growth % PQ	(0, QTR) / (1, QTR)
Gr%PYQ	Growth % PYQ	(0, QTR) / (4, QTR)
Gr%TTM	Growth % TTM	(0, TTM) / (4, TTM)
Gr%PQTTM	Growth % TTM 1Q Ago	(0, TTM) / (1, TTM)
Gr%A	Growth % Annual	(0, ANN) / (1, ANN)
Gr%3Y	Growth % 3 year	(0, ANN) / (3, ANN) annualized
Gr%5Y	Growth % 5 year	(0, ANN) / (5, ANN) annualized
Gr%10Y	Growth % 10 year	(0, ANN) / (10, ANN) annualized
RSD%ANN	RSD % 10Y of annuals	LoopRelStdDev ("function(CTR,ANN)",10,0,1,1))
RSD%TTM	RSD % 5Y of TTM	LoopRelStdDev ("function(CTR*2,TTM)",10,0,1,1))
RegEstTTM	Regression Est 5Y	Eval(LinReg("function(CTR * 2, TTM)", 10) , EstimateY(0), NA)
RegGr%TTM	Regression Gr% 5Y	Eval(LinReg("function(CTR * 2, TTM)", 10) , RegGr%(2), NA)
RegEstANN	Regression Est 10Y	Eval(LinReg("function(CTR, ANN)", 10) , EstimateY(0), NA)
RegGr%ANN	Regression Gr% 10Y	Eval(LinReg("function(CTR, ANN)", 10) , RegGr%(1), NA)
Period	Description	Corresponding Parameters
%SalesQ	% of Q Sales	function(0, QTR) / Sales(0, QRT)
%SalesA	% of A Sales	function(0, ANN) / Sales(0, ANN)
%AssetQ	% of Q Assets	function(0, QTR) / AstTot(0, QRT)
%AssetA	% of A Assets	function(0, ANN) / AstTot(0, ANN)
PSQ	Per Share Q	function(0, QTR) / Shares(0, QRT)
PSA	Per Share A	function(0, ANN) / Shares(0, ANN)
3YAvg	3 Year Average	LoopAvg("function(CTR, ANN)", 3)
5YAvg	5 Year Average	LoopAvg("function(CTR, ANN)", 5)

NOTES: 

• Availability varies by factor.
• PTM uses interim periods, so the offset is 4, not 1.

Click here for the Line-Item Reference Spreadsheet.