Quality Of Earnings

See: Earnings Quality. Same idea.

When you have quality earnings, it means that the earnings numbers carried "tricks," i.e. you had huge exposure to the Zimbabwean dollar in your business, and in the quarter, that currency's value doubled relative to the U.S dollars as China was annexing the country.

That'd be a one-time event, really, and yes, it's great that you made a bunch of dough on a currency exchange. But if your business is copper mining, then big gains on currency trading isn't your line of business, so those gains aren't of high earnings quality. You want earnings that are sustainable and give investors comfort that the $1.20 a share you earned this year will, in fact, be $1.50 next year and $1.80 the next....and not subject to the random-ish fluxuations of relative currency valuations.