Actuals

As a company moves from the first to the fourth quarter of its reporting period, the forecasting horizon becomes shorter for analysts, and the precision of their estimates for that period tends to increase. Near the end of the period, the company wants to avoid missing expectations, and analysts are striving to come up with the most accurate numbers.

When financials results are published, analysts would typically revise their forecasting models with the actual numbers. A last consensus called "Actuals" is then calculated.

On the "Consensus Estimates" view, data representing information about the past is tagged with the symbol (a) for "actuals", while data representing information about a future period is tagged with the symbol (e) for "estimates".