Three numbers. That is all I look at first when a company reports.

Four companies in my portfolio reported results recently.

Aramco. Al Rajhi. SNB. STC.

The financial press wrote thousands of words about them.

Revenue growth. Margins. Loan-to-deposit ratios. EBITDA. Capex. Consensus estimates. Guidance.

I start with three numbers. That is it.

If those three numbers look fine, I usually don't need to go much further. If one of them looks wrong, that is when I start digging.

This issue explains what they are.

An equity analyst at an investment bank has a different job from me.

They are trying to estimate what a company is worth, forecast earnings several years out and eventually arrive at a price target.

That requires a model with dozens of assumptions.

I am not trying to predict where Aramco or Al Rajhi will trade in 12 months.

I am trying to answer a much narrower question:

Is this business still healthy enough to keep paying me, and ideally pay me more over time?

That changes what I need from an earnings report.

For the income part of my portfolio, I start with three things.

First question:

Did the company make more money than it did a year ago?

I compare year on year, not quarter on quarter.

Businesses have seasonality. Ramadan moves. Interest rates change. Oil prices move. Consumer spending moves around.

Comparing the same quarter a year earlier gives me a cleaner starting point.

I am not looking for a particular growth percentage. I am looking for direction.

Al Rajhi's Q2 2026 net profit came in at SAR7.01 billion, up 14% year on year.

SNB also grew earnings.

Aramco's Q2 net profit attributable to shareholders came in at SAR121.5 billion, up almost 42% year on year.

STC was the exception. Q2 net profit attributable to shareholders fell about 5% year on year to SAR3.62 billion.

Does that mean I sell STC? No.

It means STC fails the first screen and I keep reading.

That distinction matters.

The three-number framework is not designed to tell me what to buy or sell.

It tells me where I need to spend more time.

This is the one I think income investors sometimes miss.

Profit is not cash.

A company can report a perfectly respectable accounting profit and still have pressure on the cash available to shareholders.

So after profit, I want to know whether the underlying business is generating enough cash to support what it is paying out.

Aramco is a good example.

Its Q2 free cash flow was $12.3 billion. Its base dividend was $21.9 billion.

On the surface, I don't love that. So I keep reading.

Aramco explained that Q2 free cash flow was affected by a $13.6 billion working-capital build.

Now I have context.

Does that make me worried about Aramco's dividend today? No.

Does it mean I will watch cash generation more closely over the next few quarters? Absolutely.

That is exactly what this framework is supposed to do.

It doesn't give me an automatic answer. It tells me where the question is.

Banks are slightly different because traditional free cash flow is not particularly useful for analysing them.

For Al Rajhi and SNB, I am looking instead at the quality of earnings, capital position and whether anything is deteriorating underneath the headline profit number.

Again, I don't need to analyse every ratio every quarter. But if something looks unusual, I keep reading.

Then we get to the number I actually own these companies for.

What did they pay me?

Not what analysts expected them to pay.

Not what somebody on X thinks they could afford to pay.

What did the board actually declare?

Aramco declared a Q2 base dividend of SAR0.3393 per share, the same as Q1 and higher than the SAR0.3312 paid for Q2 last year.

SNB declared SAR1.15 per share for H1 2026, up from SAR1.00 for H1 2025.

STC declared another SAR0.55 per share for Q2, exactly in line with its fixed quarterly dividend policy.

For me, this is where the previous two numbers meet.

Profit tells me whether the earnings engine is working.

Cash and balance-sheet strength tell me whether those earnings can support distributions.

The dividend tells me whether shareholders are actually receiving them.

That is the income thesis.

This one isn't a number.

Has management said anything that changes what I should expect over the next 12 months?

This is when I read the results commentary.

I am looking for things like a change in dividend policy. A major increase in capex. Pressure on capital or liquidity. A sudden increase in provisions. A large acquisition. Management signalling that conditions ahead will be materially worse.

Anything that changes the reason I own the business.

If there is nothing there, I move on. If there is, I dig.

This is also why I would never say revenue, EBITDA, margins, provisions or guidance don't matter.

They do. They are simply not where I start.

Revenue.

EBITDA.

Consensus EPS.

Analyst price targets.

Whether earnings "beat" by two halalas.

None of those numbers are useless.

Some of them become extremely important when something else looks wrong. But my objective is not to turn every quarterly result into a research project.

Take SNB.

Profit grew year on year and the H1 dividend increased. Good.

But if credit-loss provisions suddenly move materially higher, I want to understand why.

That is information that could eventually affect earnings, capital and therefore the dividend. So I read further.

The point isn't to ignore information.

It is to know when information becomes relevant to your thesis.

When one of my companies reports, this is basically what I do.

Open the Tadawul announcement or investor relations page.

Find net profit and compare it with the same quarter last year.

Check cash generation, or the relevant balance-sheet and capital measures if it is a bank.

Find the dividend declaration and compare it with the previous payment.

Then read the management commentary looking for anything that changes the outlook.

If everything looks normal, I close it.

Maybe eight minutes.

And then, most of the time, I do absolutely nothing.

That last part is important.

We spend a lot of time talking about what investors should buy and sell.

Sometimes an earnings report simply confirms that the company is doing what you bought it to do.

No trade required.

I don't read earnings reports trying to understand everything. I read them trying to answer a much narrower question:

Has anything changed that threatens the reason I own this business?

For my income positions, I start with three numbers.

Is profit moving in the right direction?

Is the business generating enough cash, or maintaining enough balance-sheet strength, to support what it is paying shareholders?

And has the dividend changed?

If all three look healthy, I usually stop there.

If one doesn't, that is when I go looking for the reason.

Margins. Provisions. Capex. Debt. Guidance. Whatever is driving the change.

The point isn't that the rest of the financial statements don't matter. They do.

The point is that I don't need 40 metrics every quarter to decide whether my investment thesis is still intact.

Sometimes three numbers are enough to tell me there is nothing to do.

And doing nothing is still an investment decision.

Next issue: Saudi Arabia is building AI data centres. HUMAIN wants 6 gigawatts by 2034. Nobody is asking who pays for it.

Sources: Saudi Exchange company disclosures and company investor relations materials, Q2/H1 2026. Figures are based on company disclosures available at the time of writing.

The Quiet Compounder is for educational purposes only and is not financial advice. Always do your own research or consult a licensed advisor before making investment decisions.