IS MARET CAPITALIZATION THE SAME AS MARKET VALUE?

[Andy L.]

Market capitalization, for a public company, is the price per share times the number of shares outstanding. That is correct.
Market value is an estimated price an item should sell for, including a house.

To have control of a company, you need over 50% of the voting shares. You do not necessarily have to own all the shares.
In theory, the market value of a company could be the number of shares times price per share, but in reality it would typically be higher. When trying to buy a lot of the outstanding shares, a person or company has to offer more than the current share price. It may also become a bidding situation that could raise of value of shares.
A private company market value has to be determined in other ways, as a multiple of revenue or profit and assets can be factored in.
Market value is an estimation. Market capitalization is a number available at the current share price.
The market value of any item is what a buyer would pay for it.

Now, the second part has to do with share prices. It has a few ways to consider it.
The valuation of a company is not just the current revenue and profit, but also accounts for future value.
http://finance.yahoo.com/q/is?s=FB
Look at the last 4 quarters of revenue and earnings in thousands.
Period EndingDec 31, 2013Sep 30, 2013Jun 30, 2013Mar 31, 2013
Total Revenue 2,586,000 2,015,000 1,813,000 1,458,000
Net Income Applicable To Common Shares 520,000 422,000 332,000 217,000
What would the future rate be with a rate of growth like this?
4 x the last quarter is over 2 Billion dollars a year in earnings
How long will the growth continue at this rate?
The growth in profit is 33.8% per quarter (every 3 months) for 2013. If it continued, the profit for the year 2020 would be $4 trillion 900 Billion dollars
It is quite obvious that they cannot keep up a profit quarterly growth rate at a 33.5% pace.
So, an investor uses all available information to come up with what they think each share is worth.
Like market value, there is a buyer and seller of shares. The price of the share may be totally different from any estimation of value. A seller thinks the shares are worth less than the market price and a buyer thinks the shares are worth more than the market price, and they come to an agreeable middle ground.
There are many things that drive the share price.
Traders often look at what is called stochastic. Prices going up are expected to keep going up and prices falling are expected to keep falling and different price curves and trends are used to determine which stocks to buy at what points because the bottom price is zero and the top price is infinity and it does not reach zero without a bankruptcy and does not reach infinity ever. There are peaks and valleys.
The price is also judged by overall market and many other factors such as current interest rates and expectation of interest rates and inflation.

If a company stock always had a number that shares are worth, they would not fluctuate very much until an earnings report was released. Instead, many many factors change the market price.

If it were easy, we could all be rich.
The Citigroup last 4 quarters were
2,456,000 3,227,000 4,182,000 3,808,000
Annual data is 13,673,000 7,541,000 11,067,000
Is Citigroup growing in profit? Answer?
A growing company is worth more than a stagnant one.

I provided only a single reason to explain the difference. There are many.
"Sexy and stylish companies" are worth more than "stodgy" ones.
The Green Bay Packers American Football Team is publically owned, but shares not traded.
They can only be transferred among family members.
Maybe the shares will be registered for trading. Their value is hard to estimate, because some people just want to own a piece of their favorite sports team.
WWE, World Wide Wrestling http://finance.yahoo.com/q?s=WWE&ql=1
Actually does have traded shares. However, there are two classes of stock, and voting control is held by a man named Vince McMahon whose shares get 10 votes each and may only be transferred to family.
It is far more complex than you think.