Priced in Years: The Earn-Back Table

• Years is the price-to-earnings ratio wearing a clock. A stock at 20 years trades at 20 times last year’s earnings per share.
• The math assumes profits never grow and never shrink. Real companies do both, which is why the table is a starting point for questions, not an answer.
• The ruler is GAAP earnings as filed, identical for every company. GAAP includes one-time items such as restructuring charges, investment gains and writedowns, so a single unusual quarter can stretch or compress a company’s clock. The adjusted figures companies publish would move several rows.
• Buybacks shrink the share count over time, which lifts earnings per share even when total profit stands still. The clock quietly speeds up for heavy buyers of their own stock.
• A long clock is not a sell signal and a short one is not a buy signal. Some of the longest clocks belong to companies whose earnings are depressed today. Some of the shortest belong to companies at peak earnings.

A cheap clock can be a warning rather than a bargain: banks and energy companies often screen between 10 and 20 years because the market expects their earnings to fall. An expensive clock can persist for decades when earnings keep compounding. This table ranks one ratio on one day. It does not rank the companies, and it is not a recommendation to buy, sell or hold any of them.

Prices are Nasdaq official closes for Friday, October 23, 2026. Earnings per share are GAAP diluted figures from SEC EDGAR company filings. The trailing twelve months are built the same way for every company: the last completed fiscal year, plus the current fiscal year to date, minus the same year-to-date period one year earlier. Where the latest filed period is itself a completed fiscal year (Costco, fiscal 2026 ended August 30, 2026; Microsoft, fiscal 2026 ended June 30, 2026), that year is the trailing twelve months. Fiscal calendars differ, so the table shows the last day of each company’s window. Nvidia’s forward figure is analyst consensus for fiscal 2028 from Nasdaq (15 estimates), pulled October 24, 2026. The data pull behind this table is retained with the Earn It Back build, and every figure on this page matches it.