A company is worth what people are willing to pay for it's shares. The share price is not the same as valuation, which can be seen in the example above. It can also be seen with what is commonly called value investing, which is used by possibly millions of people, purchasing shares where the book value is greater than the trading value.
> company is worth what people are willing to pay for it's shares
If you say a company’s shares are “worth” $1 per share, you imply that’s what people are willing to pay for it. If you’re playing with the word “worth,” it’s your incumbency to explain that deviance from the common use.
Par value is a legal term. Book value is an (increasingly anachronistic) accounting term; actually, several terms, since GAAP book is separate from IASB or Chinese book, but I digress. Each of which are separate from market value, which is also various; consider a public stock: does one take the bid or the offer or the mid market tick? At Noon or the closing or a VWAP?
Companies play with their headline valuation. In this you are correct. But they’re playing with the ambiguity that stumbles you.
You agreed with my comment elsewhere. Please stop with strawman restatements and arguing for the sake of arguing.
> Technically, no. You can acquire control of a $100bn company for $1 if the shareholder agreement says so. Votes and dollars don’t have to correlate, particularly in Italy. [1]
