Forecasting EPS

I was recently asked a question by a junior analyst in my team around forecasting EPS. More specifically, how should we think about forecasting basic shares. I know there are several ways to skin a cat, but I tend to use a simple approach for the basic share count which can be expressed as: last period share count +($ Shares Issued - $ Shares Repurchased)/Avg Share Price during period. I know the flaw with this approach is having to forecast the avg share price in the future, but there really isn't too much variance in the EPS numbers unless you have wild swings in the share price. 

Curious to know how others think about this...