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Finance: What is a whisper number? 16 Views
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Description:
What is a whisper number? The rumor mill. The gossip chain. The whisper number is the Wall Street version of those word of mouth speculations. Whisper numbers are allegedly rumored earnings numbers that large producing producers tell their high net worth clients in advance of quarterly report announcements. Of course, whether or not these whisper numbers are genuine insider information or just estimated rumors, they can still raise or lower expectations before official announcements and can thus move markets. Sarbanes-Oxley rules make leaking of actual information from companies much more difficult to maintain without penalty, so whisper numbers are more likely opinion and speculation now more so than ever before.
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Transcript
- 00:00
Finance allah shmoop what is ah whisper number all right
- 00:07
this is but hair implants it's going to be the
- 00:10
next amazon Trust me anyway be h i is trading
- 00:13
at one hundred times earnings five times the price to
- 00:17
earnings multiple of the average growth stock today trading it
Full Transcript
- 00:20
twenty times earnings last year be h i earned a
- 00:23
dollar a share It has a buck or two a
- 00:25
share in cash and no debt It has communicated a
- 00:27
wall street through its quarterly conference calls and meetings with
- 00:31
analysts that it's coughing lee hopes to earn a dollar
- 00:36
fifty this year a dollar to a dollar fifty what
- 00:39
we did there with the word coughing Lee you know
- 00:41
it's not from these cohibas we cough because they cough
- 00:45
when they say a dollar fifty Why Well because we
- 00:48
do the math on a few of the key metrics
- 00:50
they've given us Like they said we're opening another two
- 00:54
thousand stores in eastern europe almost double our number in
- 00:58
the u s today and they say we're supply constrained
- 01:02
just not enough but hair to go around so we're
- 01:05
shopping for more Apparently slovenia has had excellent harvest this
- 01:10
year and then they say people are growing older boulder
- 01:14
and yeah there really is something about all that wifi
- 01:16
in carrying cellphones in your pocket all the time yeah
- 01:19
that's what they say and that was the recording of
- 01:21
them saying it really we were there All right so
- 01:23
if you had everything up and put the above data
- 01:25
and a few other teen nuggets of information you've gleaned
- 01:28
about their hair growth industry perspective well then your financial
- 01:32
model would show earnings this year something more like three
- 01:36
or even four dollars a share not that paltry dollar
- 01:40
fifty that they're telling everyone they hope to make if
- 01:42
they try really hard So you wonder why on earth
- 01:45
would the cfo of but harry implants guide analysts in
- 01:48
making them believe the company would only earn a dollar
- 01:51
fifty when she and everyone around her thinks that more
- 01:54
likely the number is going to be three or four
- 01:56
bucks a share in earnings this year Well lawsuits for
- 02:00
one puns of ambulance chasing scummy lawyers out there claiming
- 02:05
they're acting in the best interest of you know bubba
- 02:07
shareholder they're just waiting for a stock to drop and
- 02:10
then they sue the company for you know stuff and
- 02:14
then there's other things not communicating well enough not marketing
- 02:18
well enough of not being able to predict the supply
- 02:21
line of their butt hair well enough Yeah you name
- 02:23
and the lawyers will see you for it Cos also
- 02:25
love being heroes and they love beating their estimates toe
- 02:29
wall street all the time It just makes him you
- 02:31
know feel good under promise over Deliver that thing All
- 02:33
right So along comes first quarter's earnings and last year's
- 02:37
first quarter showed earnings of sixteen cents a share Your
- 02:40
went by quarter like this sixteen twenty three one nine
- 02:43
Thirty There you go So the street is expecting at
- 02:46
least thirty two cents in earnings this quarter It'd be
- 02:49
growth of one hundred percent over the period a year
- 02:52
ago But one hundred percent growth from last year would
- 02:55
give the company earnings of two dollars a share So
- 02:58
that's not what the street is really thinking when it's
- 03:02
paying one hundred dollars a share for this stock If
- 03:05
they were actually thinking the stock would really print on
- 03:08
ly two dollars a share in earnings the stock would
- 03:10
probably not be trading for one hundred boxes share and
- 03:14
probably more like fifty there's nothing trades at fifty times
- 03:17
actual earnings or at least not fifty times what wall
- 03:21
street actually thinks the company will print The number of
- 03:23
the street is whispering It took us a long time
- 03:27
to get there the whisper number thing but we did
- 03:29
is forty cents a share in earnings there whispering that
- 03:32
the company says they'll dio something less than forty but
- 03:36
they better hit forty cents because that's what everyone's whispering
- 03:38
about If the company hits forty cents in its first
- 03:41
quarter's earning to report while learning through the rest of
- 03:43
the year could go something like this you know forty
- 03:45
fifty sixty seventy and then that would produce to twenty
- 03:49
years share in earnings and i would be the absolute
- 03:51
minimum the company would need to keep anything close to
- 03:54
its huge multiple or stock price It probably needs more
- 03:57
earnings growth to stay triple digits something like maybe forty
- 04:01
sixty eighty eight dollars something like that and then you're
- 04:04
in the three dollars in change number and that would
- 04:06
work a lot better because then you're only treading it
- 04:08
Like twenty eight times earnings which is not some astronomical
- 04:11
multiple Got it all right Well the key idea here
- 04:14
is that the whisper number is the rial number that
- 04:17
actual investors care about the company hitting not what the
- 04:21
stockbrokers sell Side analysts published in their earnings estimates that
- 04:26
they hoped the company would earn thirty two cents Blah
- 04:29
ba blah ba blah Yeah can't trust your stockbroker in
- 04:31
that setting So the key idea here is the number
- 04:34
that matters is the whisper number whisper number because on
- 04:38
wall street you don't always die with a yell sometimes
- 04:42
it's just with a whisper like that so that's a
- 04:45
whisper number Now go out and buy a bunch of
- 04:47
b h i stock and remember i'm not on ly 00:04:50.415 --> [endTime] but harry implants client I'm also the president
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