Board outcome, results and shareholding pattern: a field-by-field map of the exchange filings

Most guides to company filings stop at “go to the corporate announcements page and search the company”. This article goes one level down: it reads three real filing types, the board-meeting outcome letter, the results filing and the quarterly shareholding pattern, and explains what each block and column is for. It describes structure and field meanings only; it does not reproduce exchange data. For the wider map of sources see the company filings guide.

Where these filings sit

Listed companies file on both NSE and BSE, and each exchange publishes the filings on its own corporate-announcements area, listed by company and date. A company’s results, outcome letter and shareholding pattern are normally PDFs or structured pages attached to a dated entry. The exchanges publish their own terms of use, which restrict automated downloading, so read them as an ordinary reader through the exchange pages: NSE shareholding patterns and BSE corporate announcements.

Before the meeting, the date comes from a board meeting intimation. The three filings below come after it or alongside it.

1. The board-meeting outcome letter

An outcome letter is a short covering letter, addressed to both exchanges and signed by the company secretary. In the two examples read for this article (one from April 2026, one from August 2026), the opening blocks were the same, but the longer letter lettered its items A, B and C and the shorter one did not.

Block	What it tells you
Addressee and codes	The two exchanges, with the company’s BSE scrip code and NSE symbol. Use these to confirm you are on the right company.
Subject line	That it is an outcome of a board meeting, sometimes with the topic (for example “financial results”).
Regulation reference	The letter says it is filed under Regulation 30 of the SEBI Listing Regulations, read with Schedule III. Results items also cite Regulation 33 (and Regulation 52 for companies with listed debt).
Items approved, lettered A, B, C	What the board decided at that meeting. One meeting can carry several: results, a recommended dividend, a date for the annual general meeting. Read each item separately.
Enclosures	The attached results statement and report, plus sometimes a press release and other certificates.
Meeting times	Time the meeting began and ended.

Things worth reading carefully inside the letter:

• “Approved” versus “recommended”. In the April 2026 example, the board approved the audited results but only recommended a final dividend. A recommended dividend becomes payable only if shareholders approve it at the annual general meeting, as that letter itself said. These are different stages and the wording matters.
• Record date. Where a dividend or similar corporate action is involved, the letter may state a record date. SEBI’s FAQ states that the record date under Regulation 42(2) cannot fall on the date of the board meeting that decides the action, because the minimum gap runs from board or shareholder approval.
• Which results. The letter names the period (quarter, half-year or full year) and whether results are standalone, consolidated or both. See standalone versus consolidated.
• Auditor wording. For annual results the letter may say the audit report carries an unmodified opinion and a declaration to that effect; for a quarter, it may enclose a limited review report instead. See unaudited and limited review results.

The outcome letter is a summary of decisions, not the numbers themselves. The numbers are in the attachment.

2. The results filing

The attachment to the outcome letter is the results statement. Its parts, in the order they usually appear:

1. Auditor’s or limited review report. Placed first in many filings. It says what the auditor did and whether anything is qualified or emphasised.
2. The statement of results. A table with one column per period, so that the current period can be set beside earlier ones; check the column headings for exactly which periods are shown. Rows run from income through expenses to profit and earnings per share. The format differs for banks, insurers and finance companies, so check the row labels rather than assuming. Our quarterly result guide explains the rows.
3. Statement of assets and liabilities. SEBI’s FAQ notes that the half-yearly results must include the statement of assets and liabilities and the cash flow for the half-year.
4. Notes. Basis of preparation, one-off items, treatment of particular balances, and segment information. Notes often explain why one column is not comparable to another.
5. Signature block. The date and place of signing and the name of the signing director or officer.

On timing, the SEBI FAQ explains that for the last quarter of the year the company files audited annual results (with the audit report) within 60 days of the year end, and that the fourth-quarter figures must themselves be audited or limited-reviewed, not left unaudited.

3. The quarterly shareholding pattern

The shareholding pattern is the most structured of the three filings. It is a fixed template of tables, and the same template is used by every company. It was read here from NSE’s own June 2024 and June 2026 filings; the six tables and the eight declarations are the same in both, though the column set differs (see below).

The header

• Entity, class of security and quarter. It states the company, the class (for example equity shares), and the “as on” quarter-end date.
• Which sub-regulation. Quarter-end filings are made under Regulation 31(1)(b). A filing under Regulation 31(1)(c) instead covers a capital restructuring, and per the SEBI FAQ is due within ten days when the restructuring changes the paid-up capital by more than two per cent.

The eight yes/no declarations

Before the tables, the company answers whether it has any of the following: partly paid-up shares, convertible securities, warrants, depository receipts, locked-in shares, promoter shares that are pledged or otherwise encumbered, shares with differential voting rights, or a significant beneficial owner. Per the template’s own note, where the answer is “No” the matching columns are not displayed and the values are treated as zero. So a blank column does not mean the data was missed; it means the declaration was “No”.

The six tables

Table	What it covers
Table I: Summary	One row per category: (A) promoter and promoter group, (B) public, (C) non-promoter, non-public (for example shares underlying depository receipts, and employee trusts), then a total.
Table II: Promoter and promoter group	Breakdown into Indian and foreign holders, then by type (individuals, government, institutions, others), with the names of holders.
Table III: Public shareholders	Institutions (domestic, such as mutual funds, banks and insurers; foreign, such as portfolio investors), government, non-institutions (resident individuals split by size of holding, NRIs, bodies corporate and others).
Table IV: Non-promoter, non-public	The holdings in category (C) in detail.
Table V: Significant beneficial owners	Who ultimately holds or controls through another registered owner, whether through voting rights, rights to dividend, or exercise of control or influence, and from what date. Shown as nil if there are none.
Table VI: Foreign ownership limits	The approved limit for foreign holding and the share of it used, at the quarter end and at the previous quarters. The example filings include it; check whether a given company’s filing does.

The column numbers

The tables share a numbered column scheme, but the scheme is not the same in every year. NSE’s June 2024 filing runs from (I) to (XIV). Its June 2026 filing runs to (XVIII) in Table I, and to (XIX) in Tables II and III, because the format was extended and the numbers shift between tables. So read the printed headings, not a remembered number. In the June 2024 layout, in order:

• (I) to (III): category, category of shareholder and number of holders.
• (IV) to (VII): fully paid-up equity shares, partly paid-up shares, shares underlying depository receipts, and the total shares held, which the header gives as (VII) = (IV)+(V)+(VI).
• (VIII): that total as a percentage of all shares, calculated, as the template says, “as per SCRR, 1957”.
• (IX): voting rights held in each class, with a total and that total as a percentage.
• (X) and (XI): outstanding convertible securities, warrants and similar, and the percentage holding assuming full conversion, the “fully diluted” view.
• (XII) and (XIII): shares that are locked in, and shares pledged or otherwise encumbered, each as a number and as a percentage.
• (XIV): shares held in dematerialised form.

The June 2026 filing keeps these ideas and adds separate columns for shares under a non-disposal undertaking, other encumbrances and a total encumbered figure, a column for the fully diluted share count itself, an entity-type column in Table II, and a sub-categorisation block in Table III. Our companion article reading a shareholding pattern table by table works through how the shares-held and encumbrance columns are measured and compared between quarters.

The two percentages in (VIII) and (XI) answer two different questions: one is measured on shares in issue, the other assumes every convertible security is exercised, so the same holder shows a smaller figure on the second basis.

Rules that explain why the tables look the way they do

In short, per SEBI’s FAQ: each holder sits in one category only, because holdings are consolidated by PAN; promoter group members are listed even with no shares; and a promoter’s name leaves the list only after the Regulation 31A reclassification process. Holders of 1% or more are named, and the notes at the end often carry the exceptions. The table-by-table article, How to read a shareholding pattern, covers these rules and the columns in depth.

A short reading routine

1. Find the dated entry on the exchange page and confirm the period.
2. In the outcome letter, list what was approved versus recommended, and note the enclosures.
3. In the results filing, read the report first, then the table, then the notes.
4. In the shareholding pattern, read the declarations first, then Table I, then the table behind any category you want to understand, then the notes.

Everything above describes how the documents are laid out. It says nothing about any company’s prospects, and returns on any investment are not guaranteed.

Basis of these figures

This article uses no company figures. Descriptions of layout come from the filings listed under sources (two shareholding-pattern filings by NSE, one outcome letter from April 2026, one from August 2026) and rules quoted from SEBI’s April 2025 FAQ on the LODR Regulations. The column numbering was checked against the June 2024 and June 2026 filings and differs between them. The two exchange links in the article point to the exchanges’ own pages and were not used to read data.