ThomsonFN provides Yahoo! Finance visitors with consensus estimates and a summary of analyst recommendations on over 6,000 equities (updated weekly). ThomsonFN also supplies a list of daily "Earnings Surprises" (updated every 15 minutes on market days).

Consensus Estimates

Brokers often estimate the future earnings per share (EPS) of a company. This shows the summary (consensus) EPS estimates of all brokers following this company for the current quarter, the current year, and the next year. For example, if this company's consensus estimates are:

Cur. Quarter 2.39

Then the analysts who are following this company more or less agree that the earnings per share for this company will be $2.39 in the current quarter.

Earnings Surprises

"Earnings Surprises" are those earnings that are most out of line with analyst consensus estimates (either better or worse than expected) on a percentage basis. Thomson First Call Earnings Surprises displays the top ten positive surprises and the bottom ten negative surprises on a daily basis.

In order to provide only the most relevant earnings per share surprises, those surprises considered statistical anomalies are eliminated. Thomson First Call has incorporated two different features to provide only the most newsworthy surprises for the day:

• A filter designed to eliminate any reported surprises that did not have at least three corporate analysts contributing to the consensus estimates. This was done to eliminate the possibility of one analyst poorly estimating earnings and therefore skewing the consensus figure to the point of exceptional earnings surprises.
• A filter designed to eliminate any reported surprises that exceed 200% positive or negative. This filter eliminates any statistical anomalies that might occur. For example, if a company has only one analyst covering it and he or she estimates $0.01 earnings per share and the company reports $0.04 per share, the % surprise would be deceiving.