Stock Split Calculator

A stock split is a corporate action that multiplies the number of outstanding shares while reducing the per-share price by the same factor. In a 4-for-1 split, every 1 share you own becomes 4 shares, and the price per share drops to a quarter of its previous level. Your total position value, the company's market capitalization, and your percentage ownership all stay the same. The split is purely a denomination change, not a value event.

A forward split (like 2-for-1, 3-for-1, or 4-for-1) gives you more shares at a lower per-share price. A reverse split (like 1-for-10 or 1-for-20) does the opposite: it consolidates many shares into fewer at a higher per-share price. Forward splits typically signal a company whose price has run up; reverse splits are usually used to lift a struggling stock back above an exchange's minimum listing price.

Companies do forward splits mostly to make the per-share price look more accessible to retail investors and to add some liquidity around round lots. They do reverse splits for the opposite reason: to push a low-priced stock back above the $1 minimum required by the NYSE or Nasdaq, or to look more credible to institutional investors who avoid sub-$5 stocks. Neither type of split changes the underlying business; it only changes the share denomination.

Apple ran a 4-for-1 forward split in August 2020 when the stock was near $500, bringing it to about $125. Tesla did a 3-for-1 forward split in August 2022 after its run from $200 to $900-plus. On the reverse side, General Electric executed a 1-for-8 reverse split in 2021 after its long decline, turning eight $13 shares into one $104 share. Nvidia did a 10-for-1 forward split in 2024, and Amazon did 20-for-1 in 2022.

Because a split changes the unit count and the unit price in exactly opposite proportions. If you owned 100 shares at $500 (a $50,000 position) and the stock does a 4-for-1 split, you now own 400 shares at $125, which is still $50,000. The market capitalization of the company is unchanged for the same reason. The only common exception is fractional shares: in a non-clean split like 3-for-2, some brokerages issue cash in lieu of any fractional share you would have received, which produces a tiny taxable event but does not change the economic picture.