Estimate Data and Fiscal Year Timing

Quick stupid question regarding the estimate data and its relationship to the Fiscal Year timing within Portfolio123. Given the two variables

CurFYEPSMean - EPS Estimate of Current Fiscal Year

and

NextFYEPSMean - EPS Estimate of Next Fiscal Year

there should be a point at which the NextFYEPSMean becomes the CurFYEPSMean. Is this managed by Portfolio123 internally, say according to the value in the WeeksToY variable, or is this only updated by the data provider.

If it is the latter, is there anyway to check at any given point in time what Fiscal Year a given estimate (CurFYEPSMean or NextFYEPSMean) is referring to?

Thanks,

Daniel

As a follow up, I have found at least one instance of what I consider an error relating to this. For CZZ, WeeksToY=4 indicating that the earnings release for 2016 has not yet been released and as far as I can tell all the internal Portfolio123 date math considers it still to be fiscal year 2016.

However, the earnings estimate data has been updated such that the CurFYEPSMean returns the 2017 estimated EPS and NextFYEPSMean returns the 2018 estimated EPS.

This wouldn’t be a problem if there was any way to check what fiscal year the estimate data refers to, but I haven’t been able to find a way to do that.

Try latestactualdays and/or latestactualperioddate

Thanks for the suggestion, looks like those variables aren’t defined for CZZ. Perhaps because it is an ADR?

I’m not sure. My first guess is that Compustat aggregated some analyst’s earnings estimate, but hasn’t recorded the “analyst’s actuals” (i.e., an analysts estimate for “core” or “comparable” actual earnings; meant to be comparable with his/her estimate).

Aggregated sell-side analysis varies significantly with regards to quality and timeliness, IMO. I’ve seen that it’s ability to predict future equity returns tends to improve as coverage increases.

I’m not sure how to solve this issue using the data which is currently provided. Maybe a good solution could significantly improve sell-side data quality, especially with regard to under-followed securities.

Something more holistic would be nice, but it seems like the fiscal year associated with a given estimate would be readily available from the data provider? Any Portfolio123 staff care to comment? This is causing me some headaches at the moment.