Dilution is what happens when a company issues new shares: the business is divided into more pieces, so each existing piece is a smaller share of it. Your holding does not shrink. Your claim on the company does.
The arithmetic
What a 95% increase in share count does
Suppose you own 10,000 shares of a company with 100 million shares outstanding. You own 0.01% of it.
10,000 ÷ 100,000,000 = 0.010%
The company issues 95 million new shares to raise money. You still hold 10,000 shares, and you have not sold anything.
10,000 ÷ 195,000,000 = 0.005%
Your ownership has roughly halved. So has your share of any future profit, any future dividend and any future sale of the company. This is not a hypothetical figure: Inovio's share count rose about 95% over the twelve months to its most recent filing. See the full INO breakdown.
Where the new shares come from
- At-the-market offerings (ATMs). The company sells shares straight into the open market, a slice at a time, whenever it needs cash. Cheap and fast for the company, and almost invisible day to day - the share count in the next filing is where it shows up.
- Registered direct offerings and PIPEs. A block of shares sold to institutions, usually at a discount to the market price, often with warrants attached that dilute again later.
- Convertible notes. Debt that turns into equity. Some convert at a fixed price; the dangerous kind convert at a discount to whatever the price is at the time, so a falling share price creates more shares, which pushes the price down further.
- Stock compensation. Ordinary and continuous at most companies, and small relative to the others - but it never stops.
Reverse splits are not the opposite of dilution
A company facing delisting for trading under $1 will often do a reverse split - ten old shares become one new one - and the share count falls sharply. Nothing has been undone: the same ownership is divided into fewer, nominally more valuable pieces. It matters here because a reverse split makes the year-on-year share count look like it collapsed, so those cases are excluded from the list below rather than being reported as negative dilution.
How to check it yourself
The cover page of any 10-K or 10-Q states the number of shares outstanding as of the filing date. Compare it with the same line a year earlier - that is the whole check, and it is harder to spin than anything in the earnings release. Watch for the gap between the cover-page count and the weighted-average count used to compute earnings per share: the weighted average lags, so EPS can look better than the current ownership position justifies.
Where dilution is running hardest, at the time of writing
Every company below has disclosed substantial doubt about its ability to continue as a going concern, and every one has expanded its share count over the last reported year. Reverse-split distortions are excluded. These figures come from filings and change as new ones land, so read the stamp before treating any row as current.
As at 21 August 2026, 250 of the 466 companies on Survival Watch had expanded their share count by 25% or more over the last reported year. Reverse-split distortions are excluded.
| Company | Shares outstanding, YoY | Cash reported | Estimated runway |
|---|---|---|---|
| INDPIndaptus Therapeutics, Inc. | 11,800% | $11.6M | 3-6 mo |
| DMRADamora Therapeutics, Inc. | 3,500% | $540.5M | 78+ mo |
| YHCLQR House Inc. | 3,300% | $4.4M | 1-2 mo |
| AGIGAbundia Global Impact Group, Inc. | 2,600% | $11.2M | 6-10 mo |
| ZONECleanCore Solutions, Inc. | 2,500% | $4.1M | 17-24 mo |
| CVCapsoVision, Inc | 2,100% | Not stated | Not estimable |
| DWTXDogwood Therapeutics, Inc. | 1,900% | $9.6M | 3-5 mo |
| XFORX4 Pharmaceuticals, Inc | 1,700% | $195.1M | 23-32 mo |
| ELOXEloxx Pharmaceuticals, Inc. | 1,500% | $62.0M | Not estimable |
| ALOYRealloys Inc. | 1,500% | $122.4M | 39+ mo |
Dilution is not automatically bad
A company that issues stock at a high price to fund something that earns more than it cost has made every remaining shareholder better off. The question is never "did they issue shares" but "what did they get for them". Shares sold at a depressed price to cover ordinary running costs are the version that destroys value, and that is the version a short cash runway makes unavoidable.