The Quick Guide to Retained Earnings
When a company generates profit, management can pay out money to shareholders as cash dividends or retain earnings to reinvest in business. Reinvestment could go toward any number of things that might help business. It could be used to fund acquisitions, build new factories, increase inventory levels, establish larger cash reserves, reduce long-term debt, hire more employees, research and develop new products, or purchase new equipment to increase productivity. Company could also choose to buy back its own shares, which might have the long-term benefit of increasing the company's market value. Because there will be fewer shares outstanding, company's per-share metrics like earnings per share and book value per share could increase and make the company's stock more attractive to shareholders. Retained Earnings Definition Retain Earnings, on the other hand, are sub-element of shareholders ' Equity. As explained above, in the Equity section, you can see invest...