Deep Dive: How to Analyze a Company's Earnings Report — Revenue, EPS, Guidance, and What Actually Moves the Stock
Every quarter, publicly traded companies release earnings reports — comprehensive financial disclosures that reveal how much money a company made, how it spent it, and where management sees things heading. For investors, these reports are the single most important source of fundamental data. They move stock prices more than almost any other event on the calendar. But earnings reports are dense documents packed with accounting jargon, non-GAAP adjustments, and forward-looking projections that can be difficult to parse. The headline numbers — revenue and earnings per share (EPS) — get the most attention, but they rarely tell the whole story. Understanding what actually matters in an earnings report, and how Wall Street interprets it, is one of the most valuable skills an investor can develop. This guide breaks down the anatomy of an earnings report using real data from recent quarters at Apple, NVIDIA, Microsoft, and Amazon. We'll walk through the key metrics, explain what drives stock price reactions on earnings day, and show you a practical framework for reading any company's quarterly results.