The only one “dancing” here is you. You didn’t read my posts carefully, and now you are making things up. In this post you state that common shares have an “issue” value. Before you said they had a “face” value. In fact, so you don’t flail around any more, common shares in an IPO are “priced”, and that pricing is simply the price at which they are first offered by the underwriter on the day of the IPO.
You don’t understand finance, although you appear to have some acquaintance with the other issues. In any event, I’ve read the thread and have concluded that over all it amounts to little more than a food fight between Apple haters and Microsoft haters. Because I don’t fall into either camp, I don’t see any real value in continuing.
Here is a Malcolm Gladwell piece that confirms what I said about the stock, and it may help you with the Microsofties: http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2011/05/16/110516fa_fact_gladwell?currentPage=all
I don't understand finance??? My degree is in Business Administration with a concentration in Finance with a minor in Economics. Sheesh! As for the "face" or "par" value of the pre-IPO stock involved, the articles of incorporation of Apple establish a par value of $7 a share. Apple was big on giving stock as a form of compensation in lieu of cash. The only way to evaluate the compensation as a taxable event was to price it at an arbitrary price since it was not traded. Hence the arbitrary $7 per share based loosely on the number of shares authorized and the amount invested in the company. . . Once it is publicly traded, the stock's Par Value becomes irrelevant as the value of the stock is set by the market at any particular moment.
Many stocks today are issued with no par value at all, unless the state of incorporation requires it.
Incidentally, pre-IPO companies who wish to use stock grants as compensation who don’t have par valued stocks can still do so; they just have to base the valuation on the current financials of the company. Not as simple, but doable.