Stocks & Investing

Earnings Per Share (EPS)

A company’s profit divided by its number of shares.

EPS is profit sliced per share, the number Wall Street watches most at earnings time. Rising EPS generally lifts a stock; a miss can crater it. Compare reported EPS to the analyst estimate to see whether a company beat or missed.

For example

A company earning $500 million with 250 million shares has an EPS of $2.00. If analysts expected $1.80, that is a beat.

Related terms

Earnings (Earnings Report)P/E Ratio

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