Guidance

Guidance is a company's own forecast for its future financial results, usually revenue or earnings for the next quarter or year, given by management alongside its regular earnings report. It reflects what the company itself expects to happen, based on the order books, bookings, and demand it can already see.

Guidance is not a guarantee. Management has every incentive to sound confident, and forecasts can be wrong in either direction, a company can guide conservatively and then beat its own number, or guide optimistically and miss it. Investors watch guidance closely anyway, since it's the most direct signal a company gives about what it expects next, and whether guidance gets raised, met, or cut over time says a lot about whether a business is accelerating or slowing down.