Is it normal that for a relatively large company there is a couple of days delay in a period filings update ?
for example ticker: RCMT
They announced First-Quarter Results on 27 April but the new figures are still missing (at least in the ‘Snapshot’ page).
Is this a problem with the data provider ?
source: https://finance.yahoo.com/news/rcm-technologies-inc-announces-first-200500189.html?.tsrc=rss
thanks!
Yes, it’s absolutely normal. FactSet tends to update data very quickly after an announcement when it’s not earnings season, but during earnings season we’ve seen them sometimes take a whole week to catch up. Our previous data provider, Compustat, was often much slower; I think FactSet may be the fastest of the three major data providers (the third being Thomson Reuters).
Thanks for explanation.
Actually I have access to Refintiv data (former Thomson Reuters)
I can see that the data for RCMT has been already updated.
Of course this is just one example but show that FactSet may not be the fastest in updates.
The top chart is the percentage of the Russell 3000 with stale statements over the last two years with FactSet’s data. The bottom is the same for Compustat’s.
Thanks Yuval. Seems like there is no significant difference.
It would interesting to see the average update delay in days between two data providers.
In terms of RCMT - still no update … I’m lucky to hold this stock but I would not not know if I should keep it or not.
On average, this flaw is likely to make no difference in portfolio performance if you hold +30 stocks and if the delay happens in random fashion.
Probably mostly affected are overoptimized strategies with low #stocks.
My advice? Keep RCMT. In my own ranking system based on Compustat data (they updated the stock’s data), it ranks #1.
But in general, I’ve seen over and over again that FactSet updates earnings announcements faster than Compustat, and indeed the above charts show that the % of stocks without updates is usually a little higher for Compustat. RCMT just happens to be an exception.
Is this delay accounted for in the historical Point In Time data?
FactSet does not keep track of how fast they process earnings announcements, and they do not give us effective dates. So for all announcements prior to the commencement of our FactSet subscription in mid-2020, we simply lag them by one day.
We also offer an Exclude Prelims option, which lags announcements made prior to filing until a day after the filing date.
Just to clarify…
RCMT earnings press release was on April 27, the actual filing on the SEC was April 28. We have these date from FactSet. If you go to the Filings in the Snapshot page you will see Q1 announce date was April 27. But… Factset backfills these dates once they actually process the filing.
After mid 2020 we track Factset turnaround when the data makes it into their database, and we make a snapshot of the prelim data. They got around to processing this around May 2 which was a preliminary filing. The filing was then completed on May 5th and overwritten in FactSet
Therefore, in a backtest , after mid 2020 you can decide to expose the last know prelim on the date when it first got added to FactSet , or just expose the final data on the date FactSet flagged it as final. Before mid 2020 all you can do is expose the complete data on the actual earnings date or filing date. It’s up to you to decide how much look-ahead is ok; it really depend on what factors you are using: some factors, like top line sales and EPS will be always available (although they may get revised).
Hope this helps
Made some edits because WE DO snapshot the preliminary data since after mid-2020. We keep one version of the prelim data which can be updated until FactSet flags the filing as complete.
