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ACTUALS
HistQ1EPSActual
Full Description

Actuals are companies' historical financial data, such as earnings, sales, and net income. Unlike fundamentals that come from official filings submitted to government agencies, Actuals are collected primarily from company press releases and/or from brokers.

Actuals are primarily used to calculate surprises vs the analyst estimates. However, integrating Actuals in fundamental analysis can offer a unique perspective compared to only using data from 10-K and 10-Q filings. This is particularly relevant when Actuals reflect different GAAP treatments, including one-off items or other specific financial occurrences.

Many semiannual companies release earning releases every quarter, and analysts follow suit with quarterly estimates. The main downside is that Actual data can be spotty and inconsistent through time, especially in the past. For example sometimes more complete actuals are the semiannual ones, and sometimes the quarterly. We use some heuristics to determine which interim items to use for a particular point in time.

Key points about Actual data: 

  • Never restated or overwritten
  • Can be more frequent (ex quarterly for semiannual companies)
  • More timely. Filings can have long delays in the processing, especially for small caps.
  • Can be quite different from GAAP numbers from filings.
  • Actuals are widely used as actionable information.

Items

The following actual items are available (use these codes in the actual_item param). Please note that coverage improves the more recent your observation date is

Actual Item Description
#CAPX Capital Expenditure
#EBIT EBIT
#EBITDA EBITDA
#EPS Earnings Per Share
#EPS_GAAP Reported Earnings Per Share
#FCF Free Cash Flow
#FFO Funds From Operations
#NET Net Profit
#PTI Pre-Tax Profit
#SALES Sales
#SHS_REPURCH   Share Repurchase
#SOE Stock Option Expense

 

Function Period
Actual(actual_item, offset, type)  
ActualQ(actual_item) Latest Quarter
ActualPQ(actual_item)

Previous Quarter

ActualPYQ(actual_item)

Previous Quarter 1 Year Ago

ActualTTM(actual_item)

Trailing 12 Months

ActualPTM(actual_item)

Previous Trailing 12 Months

ActualA(actual_item) Latest Year
ActualPY(actual_item) Previous Year
ActualGr%PQ(actual_item) Growth Q
ActualGr%PYQ(actual_item) Growth PYQ
ActualGr%TTM(actual_item) Growth TTM
ActualGr%A(actual_item) Growth Annual


Collection

Actuals are collected from different sources, like press releases and brokers. When the values are collected from press releases, FactSet refers to them as ‘Company Actuals’. When collected from brokers they are referred to as ‘Broker Actuals’. Currently we do not offer a way to distinguish the source of the Actual.