Earnings yield (Earnings yld)
Last year's profit expressed as a percentage of what the shares cost.
It puts a share on the same footing as a bond: this is the return the current profit would give you at this price.
How it is computed here
Earnings per share / share price x 100
Combines more than one basis. See the note. The pipeline prefers the data vendor's published trailing-twelve-month ratio when one exists, and falls back to recomputing from the latest filed fiscal year when it does not. Those two are different measurements: the vendor figure puts twelve months of flow over the most recent quarterly balance sheet. The source trail on each figure names which path produced it. Filed under value. Higher is the stronger reading, other things equal.
No published threshold exists for this figure, so this page prints none. Read it against the company's own history and its peers instead.
When it misleads
- It assumes this year's profit repeats, which is the whole question rather than the answer.
- A very high yield usually means the market expects the earnings to fall, not that it has made a mistake.
- Clamped to a range of -200 to 200 percent so a near-zero price cannot produce an absurd figure.
Questions
How is earnings yield calculated?
Earnings per share / share price x 100. Combines more than one basis. See the note. The pipeline prefers the data vendor's published trailing-twelve-month ratio when one exists, and falls back to recomputing from the latest filed fiscal year when it does not. Those two are different measurements: the vendor figure puts twelve months of flow over the most recent quarterly balance sheet. The source trail on each figure names which path produced it.
What does earnings yield tell a value investor?
It puts a share on the same footing as a bond: this is the return the current profit would give you at this price.
When does earnings yield mislead?
It assumes this year's profit repeats, which is the whole question rather than the answer. A very high yield usually means the market expects the earnings to fall, not that it has made a mistake. Clamped to a range of -200 to 200 percent so a near-zero price cannot produce an absurd figure.