what are earnings?

from investors.com:
"A= Annual earnings should be up 25% or more in each of the last three years."

I can't find a value for "earnings" in either a balance sheet, income statement, or cash flow statement in either quote.com, finance.yahoo.com, or finance.google.com

I tried calculating earnings per share by substituting earnings with "net profits" and I got values very close to an EPS value on a given finance site. But they are still wrong.

Where do I find values for earnings? Talk about a basic question!

Thanks in advance.

Earnings are Profit after Tax (PAT).

Sometimes a company will also report Adjusted PAT which excludes Intangible Amortisation and one-off income and/or costs to make easier year-on-year comparison of underlying profitability.

Some companies particularly barely profitable and loss making companies will sometimes report EBITDA aka earnings before the bad bits! They assume the tooth fairy pays the rest of the expenses and amortisations

You will find this information in the Income Statement.

Earnings

thank you for your response fibonelli,

But isn't Profits After Tax the same thing as Net Profits?

gibbie said:

thank you for your response fibonelli,

But isn't Profits After Tax the same thing as Net Profits?

Click to expand...

Basically yes.

To answer your original question, what they are suggesting you look for is Earnings Per Share (EPS) growing at 25%+ annually. You don't want to use just the Net Income figure because that doesn't reflect any changes in the shares outstanding which might have taken place. Yahoo!, et al report both recent annual and quarterly EPS figures, as well as analyst forecasts. For example: GOOG: Analyst Estimates for GOOGLE - Yahoo! Finance