GlossaryEarnings
Earnings
The company's earnings as a line in its own pane below the chart: net income or earnings per share, by default over the trailing twelve months. Right below the candles, you can see whether earnings are keeping pace with the price, and where analysts see them going in the coming quarters.
What is drawn
- Net income: earnings after tax attributable to shareholders, in the currency the company reports in.
- Per share: diluted earnings per share, meaning divided by all shares, including those from options and convertible bonds.
Both are the reported figures under accounting rules, with all one-off items. Each point is the earnings of the twelve months up to a quarter end: at the end of a fiscal year its annual figure, otherwise the twelve-month value up to that quarter. For earnings per share, this usually gives one point per quarter for the last three years; for net income, one per fiscal year plus the most recent quarters. The line usually starts around four fiscal years back.
Stock splits are adjusted for: earnings per share from before a split are based on today's share count, just like the price.
Each value sits on the day it was published, not at the end of its quarter. The market only knew the number once it was reported; drawn at the quarter end, it would appear on the chart weeks too early. Where the report date is not known, the line places the value after the quarter end by the company's usual gap between quarter end and report (35 days if there are no known reports).
Between two reports, the line runs as a monotone cubic curve: it hits every reported value exactly, rises or falls between two points only as far as they are apart, and invents no peaks. Filled dots mark the reported figures. If the visible values are partly profit and partly loss, a thin dashed line shows zero.
Good to know
- Stocks only. Funds and ETFs do not report earnings; they appear in the menu with “no data” and the reason.
- Earnings per share here are the reported figure. The “Earnings per share” widget shows the number analysts are measured against; for companies with one-off items, the two differ.
- Quarter fluctuates with seasonal business.
- Between two reports, the curve is a smoothing, not a reported figure. Only the dots are exact.
- In replay, the line shows only what had been reported up to the replay time, and no estimate.