What is a good earnings surprise percentage?

There is no fixed threshold. A small beat can move a stock a lot if the market expected a miss, and a large one can do nothing if guidance disappoints. Compare the figure with the company's own record of past surprises and with the move the options market was pricing before the report.

Does a positive earnings surprise mean the stock will go up?

No. The price reacts to the whole release: revenue, margins, the outlook for next quarter and what traders hoped for beyond the published consensus. A company can clear the estimate and still trade lower the next morning if any of those points disappoint.

Where can you see a company's past earnings surprises?

Most earnings calendars and quote pages keep a history tab listing past quarters with the estimate, the actual figure and the surprise for each. A run of small beats every quarter can mean analysts habitually set the bar where the company is sure to clear it.

Earnings Surprise: Measuring a Beat or Miss Against Consensus

$1.32 minus $1.20 is $0.12. Divide that by $1.20 and you get 10%, which is the number most earnings calendars print in the surprise column the moment a hypothetical company’s report hits the wire.

The formula

Surprise % = (actual EPS - consensus EPS) / |consensus EPS|

The bars around the denominator mean absolute value. You drop the sign. That sounds fussy until a company is expected to lose money.

Company B lost money and still beat. Without the absolute value the denominator would be negative, the sign of the answer would flip, and a loss half the size analysts expected would show up on the calendar as a 50% miss, the opposite of what happened. When the consensus sits close to zero, the percentage explodes: a two-cent beat on a one-cent estimate is +200%, so for near-breakeven companies look at the dollar gap and ignore the percentage.

Adjusted or GAAP?

Most calendars compare the estimate with adjusted EPS. That’s the figure companies label non-GAAP, adjusted or “excluding items,” which strips out things like restructuring charges, stock compensation or one-time gains. Analysts mostly forecast on that basis.

GAAP EPS is the figure in the financial statements. It can be lower. It can also be higher, when a one-time gain inflates it. A quarter can show an adjusted beat and a GAAP miss at the same time, and both headlines will be accurate. Read the release to see which figure the company leads with, and find the reconciliation table that walks from one to the other. Companies that present a non-GAAP measure have to show that reconciliation under SEC rules.

Revenue surprise works the same way

Take the reported revenue, subtract the consensus revenue, divide by the consensus. No absolute value is needed here, because revenue is never negative. A hypothetical company expected to post $500 million that reports $490 million has missed by $10 million, or 2%. Revenue is harder to manage with accounting choices, buybacks or a lower tax rate, so a revenue miss alongside an EPS beat tends to get read as a quality problem. Check both.

A beat against a lowered bar

Estimates move. If analysts had the quarter at $1.30 three months ago and cut it to $1.20 in the weeks before the report, the $1.32 print is a 10% surprise against the current consensus and less than 2% above where expectations started ($0.02 / $1.30, about 1.5%). The calendar only shows you the first number. To see the second you need the estimate history, which some calendars and research screens chart as a revision line, and the story it tells about how far expectations were walked down before the company cleared them can be very different from the headline beat.

What people get wrong

Treating the size of the surprise as a forecast of the price move. The stock reacts to the whole report, guidance included.
Comparing a surprise on one calendar with an estimate from another.
Missing that the beat came from a lower tax rate or a smaller share count.
Ignoring revenue.
Reading a percentage on a near-zero estimate as meaningful.

The first mistake matters most. A stock can beat by 10% and fall, and why a stock falls after beating earnings runs through the usual reasons. It’s also why some traders wait to see whether the post-report gap holds before acting, the approach argued in let the earnings gap be tested.

How it shows up on screen

After a report, an earnings calendar usually fills in three cells: the estimate, the actual and the surprise, often colored green for a beat and red for a miss. Some add a revenue estimate and revenue surprise in the next columns. A company’s history page may list several past quarters of surprises in a row, which is useful for seeing whether a company habitually clears a low bar. To learn how the estimate column is built, see where earnings estimates come from.

Consensus estimate is the average forecast the surprise is measured against. Earnings guidance is the company’s own forecast, which often moves the stock more than the surprise does. Whisper numbers are unofficial expectations with no published source.