earning per share
- noun
- /ˈɜrnɪŋ pər ʃɛr/
- Specialized
- The company's earnings per share increased significantly this year, indicating strong profitability.
- income and earnings per share
Examples
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The company sees earnings per share of $5.00 to $5.10 for the fiscal year.
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New issuance increases the number of shares outstanding, which, for a given level of earnings, leads to lower earnings per share.
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The company beat expectations regarding revenue but missed on the expectations of earnings per share.
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To do this, we ranked all of the 500 companies by their sales and earnings per share growth.
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Net income was $1.9 million, and diluted earnings per share were $0.10 for the June 30 period.
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Twelve trailing months' earnings per share reached a value of $8.28.
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For the entire 2009 fiscal year, Apple reported $9.08 in earnings per share on $42.9 billion in revenue.
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Aflac posted a 92% gain in earnings per share in the first half; however, revenue only rose 19%.
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The company expects to garner adjusted earnings per share between $3.44 and $3.49 per share in 2012.
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Dell reaffirmed a previous forecast calling for full-year adjusted earnings per share of at least $1.70.
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Surface Forms
Morphology
The meaning is directly compositional from the constituents: 'earn(ings)' = company profit/income, 'per' = for each unit, and 'share' = a unit of ownership. Although the term is financial, the rate/ratio pattern 'X per Y' is cross-linguistically common, so a B1 learner who knows the parts can infer the MWE refers to profit allocated to each share.
Etymology
The term earning per share is easiest to imagine as a company's profit split like a cake among all its shares, where earning is the profit and each share gets a slice. So, earning per share shows 'how much profit each share gets', which helps people see how profitable a company is.