Free Float Employee Held Shares - datatype (NOSHEM)

The percentage of total shares in issue held by company employees, or by those with a substantial position in a company that provides significant voting power at an annual general meeting (typically family members).

NOSHEM is a component of the Datastream free float data set, a comprehensive breakdown of a company’s ownership that uses a 5% holding threshold criteria.

The free float number of shares represents the total amount of share capital freely available to ordinary investors and is expressed as a percentage of total number of shares. The balance of a company’s share capital will be in the form of strategic holdings, considered to be excluded from normal dealing. LSEG Datastream enables strategic holdings analysis by owner type.

Ownership is categorized into the following holding types: Pension Fund, Employee, Government, Investment Company, Cross Company and Other. For a holding to be included in one of these categories and counted against the free float value it must meet or exceed 5% of shares outstanding. These owner types also form the Strategic holdings (NOSHST) measure, anything outside of this is considered Free Float.

A standalone Foreign holding (NOSHFR) measure is also derived using ownership data.

For the owner type compilation rules see Free Float Component Matrix.

Free float is calculated using identified share ownership, it is not an independently researched number. If a major shareholder is not captured, for whatever reason, the free float number will be impacted.

Collected by the LSEG Ownership Group the data is sourced from filings, registrars, annual and interim reports, stock exchanges, official regulatory bodies, third party vendors, company websites, approved news sources and direct contact with company investor relations departments.

See below for the full set of Datastream free float datatypes:

NOSHFFFree Float
NOSHCOFree Float Cross Holdings
NOSHEMFree Float Employee Holdings
NOSHGVFree Float Government Holdings
NOSHICFree Float Investment Company Holdings
NOSHOFFree Float Other Holdings
NOSHPFFree Float Pension Fund Holdings
NOSHSTFree Float Strategic Holdings
NOSHSAFree Float Strategic Holdings - Active
NOSHSPFree Float Strategic Holdings - Passive
NOSHFRFree Float Foreign Holdings
FFNOSHFree Float Shares
OTNOSHFree Float Outstanding Shares
MVFFFree Float Market Value

Free float is compiled on a monthly basis, stored as a timeseries on the first weekday on the month. Over 75,000 securities are covered, with histories going back to 1997

The LSEG Ownership Group also publish a free float measure which excludes holdings based on owner type, but without a percentage threshold criteria:

NOSHAFLSEG Ownership Group Free Float
NOSHSSLSEG Ownership Group Strategic Holdings
AFNOSHLSEG Ownership Group Free Float Shares
SSNOSHLSEG Ownership Group Strategic Shares