Q1'24 Inside The Buy-Side® Earnings Primer®
- January 4, 2024
What can we learn from 2023 guidance practices as we enter 2024?
To garner insights into the latest trends, we analyzed the guidance practices of the S&P 500.
Key Findings:
- Practice: Among the S&P 500, a substantial 68% of companies provide some form of quantitative guidance, encompassing Revenue, EPS, EBITDA, Capex, and/or FCF.
- Cadence: Notably, two-thirds of this cohort issue annual guidance only, while 10% and 23% provide quarterly only or both, respectively.
- Leading Metrics: Revenue and EPS are the leading guidance metrics provided on both an annual and quarterly basis, while Capex and FCF are the most commonly issued on an annual-only basis. The sectors with the most quarterly-only guidance issuers are Tech and Consumer Discretionary.
- Evolution of Guidance Spreads: When looking at pre- and post-pandemic guidance setting (2018 – 2023), we confirm that spreads are widening, largely to account for increased uncertainty and smarter expectations management.
- EPS Guidance: The average annual EPS guidance spread has widened in recent years, escalating from $0.23 in 2018 to a substantial $0.41 in 2023.
- Revenue Guidance: Average top-line spreads, while also increasing over the same 5-year timeframe, widened 0.3% and have held steady over the past three years.
Corbin Advisors is a strategic consultancy accelerating value realization globally. We engage deeply with our clients to assess, architect, activate, and accelerate value realization, delivering research-based insights and execution excellence through a cultivated and caring team of experts with deep sector and situational experience, a best practice approach, and an outperformance mindset.
Partner with Us
Leverage the experience and expertise of our team.
A strategic consultancy accelerating value realization globally
About Corbin
Advisory Solutions
- Earnings
- Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG)
- Initial Public Offering (IPO)
- Investor Days
- Investor Presentations
- Investor Relations Advisory
- Investor Relations Immersion
- Investor Targeting & Marketing
- Research as a Service (RaaS)
- Strategic Communications Gap Analysis
- Strategy & Communications
- Voice of Investor® Perception Studies
Subscribe to Inside the Buy-Side®
Access insights in our regularly published research, which captures trends in institutional investor sentiment globally.