Detail history
This part of I/B/E/S contains the estimates of individual analysts and the actual values. Most data is available for EPS.
Requesting data consists of four steps:
Step 1: What date range do you want to use?
There are four date variables you can use to start with:
- Forecast Period End Date: the ending month and year of the fiscal period to which the estimate applies (the end of the fiscal year or quarter).
- Activation Date: the date that the forecast was recorded in the I/B/E/S database.
- Announce Date: the date that the forecast was reported by the analyst.
- Review Date: the most recent date that an estimate was confirmed as accurate by the analyst. - The name might seem to refer to a review of the forecast, but that's not the case. If a forecast isn't accurate anymore according to the analyst, he will give a new forecast, that's also recorded in I/B/E/S. The old and the new forecasts are both recorded in I/B/E/S.
The Announce Date can be after the Forecast Period End Date: an analyst could report a forecast for the EPS of Google for the fiscal year 2009 on January 20, 2010, because the actual value was published after that day, on January 21, 2010.
Make your choice using the dropdownmenu and select the start- en enddates.
Example 1: If you are searching for forecasts made in 2008, for the the EPS in the fiscal years 2008, 2009, 2010 etc, than you have to select Announce Date, Jan 2008 and Dec 2008. |
Step 2: How would you like to search this dataset?
These identifiers (or company codes) are used in I/B/E/S:
- Official Ticker
- I/B/E/S Ticker
- 8-digit Cusip
Mark the identifier you use. You can enter the identifiers manually, upload a txt-file with identifiers, use saved codes in myWRDS or search the entire database.
PLEASE NOTE: by default 'US File only' is marked in I/B/E/S. When you're looking for forecasts for companies outside the US, you have to mark 'International File only' or 'Both'. Otherwise, only forecasts for American companies will be searched. |
Then you choose the variable(s) you want to see forecasts of: most data is available for Earnings per Share.
The third choice is the Forecast Period Indicator.
- FPI = 1 - the forecasts are made for the fiscal year and are reported in the year before the publication of the annual report.
- FPI = 2 - the forecasts are made for the fiscal year and are reported in the year before FPI = 1, etc.
- FPI = 6 - the forecasts are made for the quarterly figures and are reported in the quarter before the publication of the quarterly report.
- FPI = 7 - the forecasts are made for the quarterly figures and are reported in the quarter before FPI = 6, etc.
- FPI = 0 - the long term growth (if you choose this date you can't select Forecast Period End Date at step 1, because there is no Period End for long term growth).
- Semiannual figures are only available for Japanese companies.
Step 3: What variables do you want in your query?
Don't forget to mark the Company Name! |
From ‘Other Variables’ these are certainly important:
- Forecast Period End Date – the enddate of the fiscal period the forecast applies to
- Announce Date – the date of the forecast
- Review Date – the last date a forecast has been confirmed by the analyst
- Estimated Value
- Actual Value - as reported by the company
- Announce Date of the Actual - the date of the publication of the actual value
- Analyst code – a code referring to the analyst who made the forecast
- Estimator – a code referring to the company that made the forecast
- Currency
- Currency from the detail actuals file
Step 4: How would you like the query output?
With the dropdownmenu's you can set the order of the columns. Then you choose the Output format, for example Excel. Because there will be a lot of dates in the output, it's useful to select a Date Format you can easily recognize. When you choose DATE9, Excel can't sort by date afterwards.
Click the button Submit Query and the downloading of the data begins. The output appears in a new screen as a link to the file. Save that file before you open it.
An example
Let's say you want to know the forecasts for the EPS of the fiscal year 2009 of Google.
- At Step 1 you choose the Forecast Period End Date as the date variable, and you select “jan 2009” and “dec 2009”.
- At Step 2 you search the ticker of Google by using the Code Lookup function (GOOG), you select Earnings Per Share and mark Fiscal Year 1, Fiscal Year 2 until Fiscal Year 10.
- At Step 3 you mark the variables (see above).
- At Step 4 you choose the Output Format.
In the output you find for example:
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You can read this as follows (click on the image to make it larger):
Analyst 022953 of company 00930 has reported on July 22, 2005 the forecast that the Earnings per Share of the company Google in the fiscal period that ends on December 31, 2009 will be 17,08 dollar. On January 21, 2010 the actual value was published: EPS was 23,20 dollar. The Forecast Period Indicator shows that this is about annual figures, the 5 refers to Fiscal Year 5. The EPS of 17,08 dollar is last confirmed as accurate by the analyst 022953 on Oktober 13, 2005; on Oktober 21, 2005 he has raised his forecast to 19,41 dollar.
WRDS shows no names of analysts, only codes.
