The earnings and dividends calendar

The earnings view shows the days companies are scheduled to report results, with the fiscal quarter each result covers. The dividends view shows ex-dividend dates, which are a different kind of event and are explained below.

Both are organised by day across the week, so the page answers what is happening between now and Friday. For a single company, its own page carries the same dates alongside the financial history behind them.

The number shown beside a company in the earnings view is the consensus analyst estimate: what a group of analysts expects the company to report. It is not what the company reported, and it is not updated to become that. This calendar shows estimates, not results.

Nothing here indicates whether a company beat or missed. The page shows only the estimate, never the reported figure it would be measured against, so a number beside a company is not a verdict on its results.

Estimates also move. They are revised in the run-up to a report, and a consensus is an average of forecasts that may be spread widely, so two companies showing the same estimate can carry very different levels of agreement behind it. The figure marks expectation rather than a threshold.

A date on a forward calendar comes from one of two places, and the difference matters more the further out you look.

A week ahead is largely settled. Two months ahead is substantially projection, which is why this view opens on the week rather than on the quarter, and why a date moving is ordinary rather than a sign that something has happened.

Companies set their own reporting dates and confirm them a few weeks ahead. A date can move because an audit is running long, because a board meeting shifted, or because the company has chosen to report alongside another announcement.

Most reports land either before the market opens or after it closes rather than during the session, which is why a company can report on a day the shares appear not to have moved and open sharply the following morning.

To receive a declared dividend the shares must be held before the ex-dividend date. Buy on that day or later and the payment goes to the seller. That date, rather than the pay date, determines who receives the money, which is why it is the one worth putting on a calendar.

On the morning a share goes ex-dividend the price typically opens lower by approximately the amount being paid, because that cash has left the company. This is mechanical rather than a market reaction, and it is why buying to capture an imminent dividend does not create value on its own: the buyer receives the payment and holds a share worth correspondingly less.

The amount shown is the declared dividend for that event. Payment schedules differ, with quarterly common among US listers while semi-annual and annual are usual elsewhere, so a single amount is not an annual figure and should be checked against the company's schedule on its own page.

Reading the EPS figure as a result. It is an estimate, and this calendar never carries the reported number.

Treating a projected date two months out as fixed.

Reading an absent company as a company with nothing scheduled, when it usually means the date is not yet in the feed.

Multiplying a single dividend by four for a company that does not pay quarterly.

Assuming the ex-dividend fall in the price is a market reaction to something. It is the payment leaving the company.