Earnings per share (EPS) is a company’s net profit divided by its number of shares outstanding, showing how much profit is attributable to each individual share. It’s the per-share building block behind several other valuation metrics, most directly the PE ratio.
For example, a company with RM100 million in net profit and 200 million shares outstanding has an EPS of RM0.50 — each share is attributed 50 sen of the company’s annual earnings.
EPS matters for screening mainly because it’s the denominator in the PE ratio, and because tracking its growth over time — rather than looking at a single year’s figure — gives a clearer read on whether a company’s profitability is actually improving.