Problems with IntExpTTM and EPSActual have been fixed

We recently found a problem with IntExpTTM. It was showing 0 for companies with large annual interest expenses. We soon realized that if even one quarter of interest expense was N/A, our formula would make the entire TTM period go to zero. To complicate matters, the reports we were getting for quarterly interest expenses made no distinction between N/A and 0. We have now fixed this misbehavior. IntExpTTM is now the sum of all non-zero and non-N/A quarters within the last twelve months; if all quarters are showing zero or N/A, then IntExpTTM = IntExpA. (We would advise you not to use quarterly numbers for interest expenses; reporting is spotty, and you’ll get a lot of zeros from companies that have interest expenses.)

We also found a problem with EPSActual, which affected EPSEst, SalesEst, EPSActual, SalesActual, SalesSurprise, EPSSurprise, HistQDifference, HistQEPSActual, HistQEPSEst, Surprise%Q, SalesEstQ*, SalesActualQ*, and SalesSurp%Q*. I had the distinct privilege to observe something I have never observed before: running a screen twice in a row and getting completely different totals. This may be the cause of some of the simulation discrepancies that some users noticed. This has now been fixed, and EPSActual and related functions should work as they used to for affected stocks.