4 KudoZ points awarded for this answer. Comment: "Thank you to andycw and to the others who took the time to respond. In the context of the translation I was working on, I found this to be the term that worked best. For further background on this term, PROZ members may also find the following article excerpt useful: FOOL'S DEN Intro to “Accretive to Earnings” Merger announcements often boast that a deal is “accretive” to earnings. What exactly does that mean? Rick Munarriz walks through the process and hopes that the assessment is “accretive” to your market knowledge. By Rick Aristotle Munarriz (TMF Edible) October 10, 2000 Another day, another merger, another fancy piece of financial jargon. Yesterday, e-commerce processor Concord EFS (Nasdaq: CEFT) announced that it would buy privately held Star Systems in a deal that would be "accretive" to future earnings. Accretive? It's a word you are seeing more and more in acquisition-related news stories. Based on the fact that the term is being touted in press releases one might assume that it is a positive thing, or at least a gauge being spun favorably. But what exactly does that word mean? By definition, accretive is "the process of growth or enlargement by a gradual buildup." Yes, it plays like the sheet music to the mega-merger symphony, but there's more to it than that. Just because a company scoops up another profitable concern does NOT make the deal accretive. Well, it will make it accretive to earnings, but when companies say "accretive to earnings" they actually mean accretive to earnings per share. For a deal to be, as they say, accretive, the acquiring company will have to report higher earnings per share after all the costs of the transaction are figured in. "