Earnings Per Share

Earnings Per Share (EPS) is the single most important variable used in determining the earnings power of a company. 

In calculating earnings per share, the dividends of preferred stocks need to subtracted from the total net income first.
Companies also reported diluted shares in their financial reports. Diluted shares include the shares of convertibles or warrants outstanding.
But investors need to be aware that Earnings per Share can be easily manipulated by adjusting depreciation and amortization rate or non-recurring items.
Earnings per share without Non-Recurring Items , which better reflects the company's underlying performance.

Compared with Earnings per share, a company’s cash flow is better indicator of the company’s earnings power.

If a company’s earnings per share is less than cash flow per share over long term, investors need to be cautious and find out why.

Price Earning Ratio

• The P/E ratio can be viewed as the number of years it takes for the company to earn back the price you pay for the stock. For example, if a company earns $2 a share per year, and the stock is traded at $30, the P/E ratio is 15. Therefore it takes 15 years for the company to earn back the $30 you paid for its stock, assuming the earnings stays constant over the next 15 years.
• In real business, earnings never stay constant. If a company can grow its earnings, it takes fewer years for the company to earn back the price you pay for the stock. If a companys earnings decline it takes more years. As a shareholder, you want the company to earn back the price you pay as soon as possible. Therefore, lower-P/E stocks are more attractive than higher P/E stocks so long as the P/E ratio is positive. Also for stocks with the same P/E ratio, the one with faster growth business is more attractive.

• If a company loses money, the P/E ratio becomes meaningless.

• Investors need to be aware that the P/E ratio can be misleading a lot of times, especially when the underlying business is cyclical and unpredictable.

Story About Monkeys & Goats and How it Applies in the Stock Market

Read the story and you will understand.

Note - This story isn't quite the same as the monkey story you may have got in one of those chain-forwarded emails.

So there was this village where one day a man appeared and said that he wanted to buy monkeys. He said that he would pay Rs 100 per monkey. The villagers caught all the monkeys in the neighbourhood and sold them to him for a hundred rupees each. Soon another man appeared and said that he would pay Rs 200 for each monkey. But there weren't any more monkeys around. They were all owned by the first man. So the villagers went to him and said that they were willing to take the monkeys back and return his money. But the monkey owner was unwilling to sell. The villagers raised the offer price to Rs 150 per monkey, then Rs 175 and finally to Rs 199 but the man just didn't want to sell, even though he clearly didn't have any use for the monkeys. Eventually, just to see whether he would sell, they offered him Rs 200 but he still refused.

The villagers were puzzled by this. Finally, one of them figured out that there must be someone else who was going to come to the village and offer even more money for the monkeys. Convinced that this was the real explanation, they went and offered the man Rs 300 for each monkey and sure enough the man accepted. Joyous at having landed such a good deal, they quickly paid him off before he changed his mind and took possession of the monkeys. The man went away with his money and lived happily ever after. The villagers waited for the next buyer. And waited… And waited... But no one ever appeared who wanted to buy a monkey.

But wait.

If you think you've guessed the moral of the story, you are wrong because the story isn't over yet.

There was another village nearby. In this village a man appeared one day and offered Rs 1000 each for a goat. Now goats were valuable, but not as much as a thousand rupees so the villagers sold the goats to this man. A similar thing happened here too. A second man appeared, offered Rs 2000 for each goat, the first man refused and eventually the villagers ended up buying the goats back for Rs 3000 each. Here too, the two men disappeared and no one ever came and offered so much money for a goat again.

But there was a difference.

Goats aren't monkeys. They could be milked every day and the milk was good and healthy. Even the goat droppings could be used as fuel (not sure of it though). When the goats eventually grew too old to be milked, the villagers could kill them for mutton. All in all, it wasn't a complete disaster.

But the monkey-owners were not so lucky. Since these weren't demat monkeys, they actually had to be kept in one's house. The monkeys ate too much, shouted and shrieked all day and sometimes bit people.

Eventually, when it became clear that the monkeys were worthless, their owners abandoned them and tried to forget about their losses.

And that's the Moral of the Story.

In the stock markets today, there are good companies that are overpriced and there are worthless companies that are overpriced. If you are going to be a fool and pay absurd prices because you think that a greater fool will appear in the future, make sure you buy a goat and not a monkey.

Note– The story is sourced from here.