Why actuals can be different compared to published financials?

Once financials results are published, you could expect estimates for that reporting period (that is, "actuals") to be equal to the published figures. This is actually not the case, especially for an item like EBITDA, for two reasons:

• First, company financials on Infront Analytics Platform are standardized to enable comparison across peers, hence values for income statement items such as EBITDA are always different from those published in the annual report because the calculation methodology is different.
• Second, when equity research analysts revise their forecasting models with published values, resulting actuals most often do not match neither the figures published by the company, nor the standardized figures available on Infront Analytics Platform, because estimates are calculated with a different methodology.