Earnings per share = negative $103.19, what does that mean?

Question

Earnings Per Share = -$103.19

What does that mean? Is that good or bad? That doesn't mean negative 103 for every share I buy right?

Answer 1

Do not buy GM.

Answer 2

It means the company lost $103.19 for every share they have issued.  It doesn't mean you have to pay anything, but its a good sign they are losing tons of money and could very well go bankrupt.  Oh, and its a bad thing - a really, really bad thing.

Answer 3

If a company loses $1000 and it has 100 shares of stock, it means it lost $10 per share.  

Conversely, if the same company makes $2000 then it made $20 per share.  

This is simply a way of putting things in perspective.  Some companies have billions of dollars in profit or losses but might also have hundred of millions of shares of stock. Therefore, the earnings or losses per share might be very small.  

Answer 4

Thats what it means.  They lost that much for every share.  It sounds like they probably had a lot of write-offs for that quarter.  Maybe they had noncash impairment charges against goodwill.  Its not a good thing but by itself you dont really know.  What matters is the prospects for the future.  Are they just taking a bath with write-offs and things are going to get better in the future, or are they going to continue to have losses.

Answer 5

It's not neccesarily bad, it depends on how you look at it. You can't be charged a negative value when you buy a share, that doesn't make sense. You buy a share for a price and it changes value over time, it never goes lower than zero. This ratio is used as a business measure and has many factors, and so sometimes a negative value is good. It is not a complete valuation measure for a stock/company. It actually describes how cash is used, not how your value is measured. Check these sites: