Published 2026-11-02. Every figure comes from the filings and prices saved here.
A slice of a company
A company is split into shares. Buy one and you own one slice of the business, including its factories, its brands, its cash and its debts.
Apple counted about 15 billion shares when it worked out its earnings for the year to September 2025. So one share is about one 15-billionth of Apple.
What the slice earned
Apple's net income that year, the profit left after every cost and all tax, was $112,010 million. Spread across the shares, that is $7.46 a share. This figure is called earnings per share, or EPS.
You would not have received $7.46. Most of it stayed inside the company, to invest or to buy back shares. It is what your slice earned, not what landed in your account.
The two ways an owner gets paid
- Dividends. Cash the company chooses to pay out. Apple declared $1.02 a share that year, and paid $15,421 million in dividends in all. Many companies pay none, and any company can cut its dividend.
- A higher price. You sell the share for more than you paid. Nobody promises this. Apple closed at $344.63 on 2026-10-30, which is only the price the last buyer and seller agreed on.
A slice that earned $7.46 sold for $344.63. Whether that is a fair price is the question the P/E lesson takes up.
What you do not own
- You cannot walk into a store and claim a phone. You own part of the company, not its products.
- If a company fails, lenders and suppliers are paid first. Shareholders get what is left, which is often nothing.
- If you buy with your own cash and do not borrow, the most you can lose is what you put in. A share can still fall all the way to zero.
Check it yourself
Figures about companies get repeated and garbled. Check "Apple earned $7.46 per share in fiscal 2025" against the filing. It takes a few seconds and needs no account.