How do you find the earnings deficit? Is it on the balance sheet?

Question

When evaluating a security using Graham's Defensive Investing Criteria he says that a company shouldn't have any earnings deficit for the last 10 years (reference, revenue deficit definition). That is to say when "the actual amount of revenue and/or the actual amount of expenditures do not correspond with budgeted revenue and expenditures".

While querying company financial statements from the related API of financialmodelingprep.com I wasn't able to find such information, the earnings deficit, or even the budgeted revenue and expenditures. So how do you find the earnings deficit, on a balance sheet?

Answer 1

You can't, because balance sheets only show actual earnings. You's have to calculate projected earnings somehow (or use someone else's calculation) to determine if there was a deficit. Many companies will publish guidelines of projected financial metrics, which sometimes (but not always) can be directly translated to earnings. But those figures won't be found on the actual financial statements.