Pardon my ignorance, but I have a question about reading “stats” on investments.
[del]Liberal Commie (socialist) Obama supporters need not respond. I’ll slit my throat (or someone’s throat) before the capital gains tax increases get me.[/del]
The “EPS” stat, in my (admittedly imperfect) undestanding, is “Earnings Per Share.”
But how do I know when a company has actually payed out on that stat?
IM (admittedly limited) E, many companies may show a values in the “EPS” stat, but at the end of the FY, say something along the lines of, “too bad, so sad, but due to fiscal constraints, no dividends will be paid this FY.”
How do I know/find out, as an amateur online investor, what a company has actually paid, in the last/or recent FY, per share?
It seems this data is otherwise lacking on the various online investment tools.
And since my IRA with Putnam Investments tanked (in FY 2002) I need some serious investment advice.
Any misspelling are still the fault of Bicardi. I’ve turned off the Floyd.
EPS is not really related to dividends. The stock with the highest EPS in my portfolio (Apple at the moment) has never and will never pay dividends. All EPS tells you is how much the company is earning, not whether there are profits or how the company will use those profits.
I use Etrade for investing and they provide graphs of stock performance. I can check a box to show all of the dividends that have actually been paid.
Earnings Per Share, EPS, is the reported GAAP earnings (GAAP net income/ profits) per share that the company made. Shareholders do not receive 100% of the profits as payouts. Some percentage of the profits are reinvested back into the company in order to grow the company. EPS is typically reported as Trailing Twelve Months (TTM) EPS, or the total earnings per share the company has made over the prior four quarters.
Dividends (Div) are the payments that are made to shareholders. Regular dividends are usually paid out once per quarter, for companies that pay dividends. Companies can also elect to pay out special one-time dividends. The most recent quarterly dividend is usually reported, although some places will report the previous year’s worth of dividends. Yahoo Finance lists the cumulative dividend payouts for the past 12 months for instance; Google Finance on the other hand lists the most recent dividend. The most reliable place to look up dividend payouts is to go to the company’s Investor Relations website. The company will usually list the dividend history if they pay dividends.
and you can see looking at the top right of the table, the last quarterly dividend was 31 cents a share. If you expand the line graph charting the stock price, you can see an arrow with a little D in it in the middle of February and the end of December, with a price over it. That indicates when and how much the dividend was.
Considering the number of insults you’ve posted tonight in various forums, you’re lucky to get only one formal warning. And, if it’s the Bacardi, then at least there’s an excuse(not a good one, but an excuse nevertheless).
Post when you’re sober.
samclem, Moderator in General Questions (and Liberal Cocksucker)