NAV — net asset value per share — is one division:
NAV = trust account balance ÷ shares entitled to redeem
Both numbers are public, both are in every quarterly filing, and computing them yourself takes ten minutes the first time and two minutes after that. Here's exactly how, including the three refinements that make your number match the actual cash payout.
Step 1 — Pull the trust balance
Open the SPAC's latest 10-Q (quarterly report) on SEC EDGAR and find the balance sheet line "Investments held in Trust Account" (wording varies slightly: "Cash and investments held in trust", "Marketable securities held in Trust Account"). That's the numerator.
Prefer machines to PDFs? The SEC publishes every balance-sheet figure as structured data — the XBRL "company facts" API — free, no key required. That's the source our own pipeline uses: for example, it reads D. Boral ARC Acquisition I (BCAR) at $10.26 per share as of March 31, 2026, straight from the company's own reported facts.
Step 2 — Pull the redeemable share count
On the same balance sheet, look for "Class A ordinary shares subject to possible redemption" (or "common stock subject to possible redemption"). This is the denominator — and using the right denominator is the step people get wrong. Do not divide by total shares outstanding: founder shares (the sponsor's ~20% block) have no claim on the trust, so including them understates NAV materially. The article on the sponsor promote explains why those shares exist at all.
Step 3 — Divide, then refine
The raw division gives you quarter-end NAV. Three refinements close the gap to the actual payout:
1. Accrue the interest since quarter-end. The trust sits in short-term Treasuries, so it grows daily. A good estimate:
NAV today ≈ NAV at quarter-end × (1 + T-bill yield × days since ÷ 365)
At a 4% short rate, that's roughly a tenth of a cent per share per day on a $10 trust — small daily, but two months of it is about six cents, which is often bigger than the discount you're trying to measure.
2. Add extension deposits, if any. When a SPAC extends its deadline, the sponsor typically deposits additional cents per share into the trust monthly — announced in 8-Ks. Over long extension cycles this compounds seriously: RENEF, a 2022-vintage SPAC, ultimately paid $12.50 per share at its July 2026 redemption (SEC accession 0001104659-26-090343). See extension votes and deposits.
3. Subtract permitted deductions. Most charters allow withdrawing trust interest to pay taxes on that interest, and up to ~$100,000 of dissolution expenses at liquidation. Impact: usually a cent or two. The proxy for any live event states the estimated net per-share figure — always the best number when one exists.
Worked example
A SPAC reports $220,150,000 in trust and 21,000,000 Class A shares subject to redemption as of March 31. Sixty days later, with T-bills at 4.2%:
- Quarter-end NAV: 220.15M ÷ 21M = $10.483
- Accrual: 10.483 × 0.042 × 60/365 ≈ +$0.072
- Estimated NAV today: ≈ $10.56 (before any tax withdrawal)
If the shares trade at $10.40, they're at a ~1.5% discount to trust with a dated exit — whether that's interesting is the subject of why below trust matters.
Sanity checks that catch real errors
- Overfunded trusts start above $10.00 (sponsors often deposit $10.05–$10.10 per unit). If your NAV comes out at $10.07 for a young SPAC, that's probably correct, not an error — the mechanics are in what a trust account actually is.
- NAV falling is a red flag in your math, not in the SPAC: trust value per redeemable share essentially never declines (redemptions remove cash and shares in equal proportion). If you computed a drop, you probably mixed denominators between quarters.
- Cross-check against a redemption event. Actual recent payouts we've recorded — $10.51 (CCAQ, accession 0001213900-26-087341), $10.85 (SBXD, accession 0001104659-26-095033), $10.88 (CUB, accession 0001213900-26-070247) — all sit exactly where trust-plus-accrual arithmetic puts them. When your estimate and the proxy's estimate disagree by more than a cent or two, trust the proxy and find your bug.
We run this same computation continuously for every SPAC we track — balance from XBRL, accrual to today, deposits from 8-Ks — and publish it on the screener. Use ours for coverage; compute your own for anything you actually intend to act on. The whole point of the SPAC structure is that the floor is verifiable — so verify it.