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Definition

The proportion of a company's shares which are held by the public at large. This excludes shares which are part of a lock-in or which are destined for the company's employee share option scheme. It can also exclude the founder or founder's family holdings. The FTSE/JSE indexes take into account only the free float of a share. On 24th January 2023 the JSE published the following rules regarding free float: "Free float will be calculated using available published information rounded to 12 decimal places. Underlying data for the calculation of free float is collected on an ongoing basis, and the detailed free float percentage as maintained by the JSE is updated accordingly. June Updates In June, a constituent’s free float will be updated regardless of size. No buffers are applied. March, September and December Updates At the March, September and December quarterly updates, a constituent with a free float of greater than 15% will have their free float updated if it moves by more than 3 percentage points above or below the existing free float. For example, Company A on a free float of 30% would trigger a change if its free float moved to above 33% or below 27%. A constituent with a free float of 15% or below will be subject to a 1 percentage point threshold. For example, Company B on a free float of 8% would trigger a change if its free float moved to above 9% or below 7%. For SWIX constituents and constituents treated as foreign in the Index Series, the Strate register number will be updated regardless of size. The 1% and 3% thresholds, as set out above, will not be applicable. Quarterly updates to free float will be applied after the close of business on the third Friday of March, June, September and December. The data cut-off for these quarterly changes will be the close of business on the last business day of the month on January, April, July, and October, respectively". In addition, "Quarterly Updates - In June, a constituent’s shares are updated regardless of size. No buffers are applied. In March, September, and December, share changes greater than 1% will be updated. The data cut-off for the March, June, September, and December changes will be the close of business on the last business day of the month in January, April, July, and October, respectively. Quarterly updates to shares are applied after the close of business on the third Friday of March, June, September and December".

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