CAPEX per Share

Calculate the capex per share, a valuation ratio that measures the amount of capital expenditures made per outstanding share of a company’s stock.

The capex per share ratio provides insight into how much capital a company invests in its operations and growth initiatives relative to its shareholder base. It can help investors assess the level of reinvestment into the business.

The formula is as follows:

\[\text{CAPEX per Share} = \text{Capital Expenditure} / \text{Weighted Average} (\text{Diluted}) \text{Shares}\]

The values are negative because capital expenditure is reported as a cash outflow in the cash flow statement; take the magnitude when comparing with sources that quote capex per share as a positive amount. Capex per share is usually compared with operating cash flow or depreciation per share: capex well above depreciation for years points to expansion, capex below it to an ageing asset base.

Also known as: capital expenditure per share.

Install the Finance Toolkit with:

pip install financetoolkit -U

Then call get_capex_per_share as shown below.

from financetoolkit import Toolkit

toolkit = Toolkit(
    ["UNP", "CSX", "NSC"],
    api_key="FINANCIAL_MODELING_PREP_KEY",
    start_date="2021-01-01",
    end_date="2025-12-31",
)

toolkit.ratios.get_capex_per_share()

Or, after setting up the Finance Toolkit MCP, ask:

How much capital expenditure per share did Union Pacific, CSX and Norfolk Southern report from 2021 to 2025?

Which returns:

	2021	2022	2023	2024	2025
CSX	-0.7942	-0.9963	-1.1212	-1.3016	-1.5569
NSC	-5.925	-8.2683	-10.3298	-10.5168	-9.8043
UNP	-4.4797	-5.8013	-5.9095	-5.672	-6.3875

Parameters

get_capex_per_share accepts the following parameters.

Parameter	Type	Description	Example
`diluted`	`bool`	Whether to use diluted shares in the calculation. Defaults to True.	`False`
`rounding`	`int \| None`	The number of decimals to round the results to. Defaults to None, which uses the rounding of the Toolkit (4 unless set otherwise).	`2`
`growth`	`bool`	Whether to calculate the growth of the ratios. Defaults to False.	`True`
`lag`	`int \| list[int]`	The lag to use for the growth calculation. Defaults to 1.	`4`
`compound`	`bool`	Whether the growth is the compound annual growth rate over the lag (e.g. lag=5 for the five-year CAGR) instead of the total change. Defaults to False.	`False`
`standardize`	`bool`	Whether to standardize (Z-Score) the result. When combined with growth=True, standardizes the growth values instead of the raw values. Defaults to False.	`True`
`trailing`	`int`	The number of periods to sum flows (income and cash flow statement items) over, with balance sheet items averaged over the same number of period ends. E.g. 4 with quarterly data gives the trailing twelve months (TTM) and 3 with annual data a three-year cumulative figure. Defaults to None, which uses single-period flows (per quarter and not annualized with quarterly data).	`4`

CAPEX per Share in Python or via the MCP

Parameters

Related Valuation Ratios