Sharescope Profit Forecasts

[megamuel]

Anyone know where they get there profit forecasts from? I was looking at a company (Amerisur Resources PLC) that has made small profits and losses over the past 5 years. -0.81m, -5.40m, -0.92m, 0.05m, -1.23m. Then this year according to the software they have forecast a 1.82m profit this year and a 20.58m profit for 2012!

Surprised by the big jump I contacted the company to ask how they reached this figure and they informed me that they had not issued any profit forecasts. So how did Sharescope get that figure? Any ideas???

Sam.

 

[SS Marketing]

Hi Megamuel,
the broker forecasts come from our data provider Hemscott. They have relationships with the equity analysts at City institutions (brokers, banks, fund managers, market makers etc.). A company (e.g. Amerisur) may be be followed by one or more analysts. These analysts may issue forecasts for turnover, profit, EPS and dividend. These forecasts will be based on their analysis of and discussions with the company in question. Hemscott collate these and produce a consensus forecast for each data item. The broker rating (e.g. Buy/Sell) is derived the same way. If you have ShareScope Plus or Pro you can see the individual broker forecasts as well as the consensus. Note that many smaller cap companies have no analysts tracking them hence there are no forecasts.
Regards,