NONOPERATING INCOME

The portion of an organization's income that is derived from activities not related to its core operations. Non-operating income would include such items as dividend income, profits (and losses) from investments, gains (or losses) incurred due to foreign exchange, asset write-downs and other non-operating revenues and expenses.

When analyzing a company's performance over a recent quarter or year, it is important to differentiate between operating and non-operating profit and loss. For example, if a company's bottom-line earnings per share is reported to be markedly higher this year than last year, but this is due to a one-time gain on investment securities, this should be excluded from the firm's operating income, in order to gain a better measure of how much the company's operations actually grew during the year.