Monday, May 6, 2019

Calcbench subscribers who use our email alerting function know it’s that time of the quarter again — the time for a flood of earnings releases, quickly followed by quarterly reports. So today let’s have a refresher course in all the ways Calcbench can help you digest the data in earnings releases.

First, as we just mentioned, you can configure your account to receive email alerts any time a company that you follow files an earnings release. Just visit your account preferences at https://www.calcbench.com/account/emailalertpreferences, where you’ll see a list of all our standard peer groups, any peer groups you’ve created, or individual companies you follow. Along the top are the types of alerts available for each group — including earnings releases.



Check that box for whatever companies you want, and within minutes of those companies filing an earnings release, you’ll see an email from Calcbench giving you the head’s up.

Second, you can use our Interactive Disclosure Viewer to read those earnings releases once they’re filed. In the pull-down menu on the left side of that page, you’ll see Earnings Releases as an option under “Choose Footnote/Disclosure Type.”

So on that page, first select the companies and the period (or periods) you want to search. Then select “earnings releases” on the left, and those earnings releases will appear on your screen. Notice you can also choose other options such as “Guidance Update” or “Guidance/Outlook” if you want to narrow your search to companies changing previous guidance. See Figure 2, below.



As always with this page, you can also enter text in the box on the right side, too; in case you wanted to search, say, all earnings releases in the S&P 500 for first-quarter 2019 that use the word “tariffs.” We can give you those results in a jiffy.

Third, our Company-in-Detail page can show you any non-GAAP metrics or other guidance a company might have included in an earnings release, along with the corresponding data filed in the quarterly report.

Simply select the “Show Guidance & Non-GAAP Metrics” button when viewing a company’s financial details. Figure 3, below, shows an example from Telsa’s ($TSLA) 2018 annual report.



Fourth, download and read our Earnings Release Analysis Guide if you want an in-depth look at earnings releases and how Calcbench processes that data. It’s 20 pages of all the background you might need on when earnings releases are filed, how companies typically present information in that document, and the tags Calcbench uses to bring that data to you clearly, quickly, and easily.


FREE Calcbench Premium
Two Week Trial

Research financial & accounting data like never before. Get features designed for better insights. Try our enhanced Excel Add-in. Sign up now to try the Premium Suite.