Academic research has consistently found that corporate earnings surprises cluster around small positive values, rather than large outperformance. In a study published in the Journal of Accounting Research, Lawrence Brown documented that the median earnings surprise shifted over time from slightly negative to meeting or beating analyst estimates by only a small amount, indicating that firms typically exceed consensus by narrow margins rather than delivering outsized surprises. This pattern...
Measuring the Beat: 57 Stocks Surpassing Earnings Expectations
