Whisper number
Also known as: whisper estimate
A whisper number is an unofficial estimate that circulates informally among traders and investors ahead of a company's , separate from the official published compiled from analysts' formal forecasts. It reflects what market participants actually expect the company to report, which is often higher than the published consensus, especially for companies with a track record of beating estimates.
Whisper numbers exist because analysts' official published estimates can lag what informed investors genuinely believe a company will deliver. A company that has beaten its for several quarters in a row often develops a reputation for sandbagging its , and traders adjust their real expectations upward accordingly, even though the official hasn't caught up. That gap between the whisper number and the published consensus is itself information, it tells you what the market has actually priced in versus what's officially on record.
This matters because a 's reaction to often depends more on the number the market was truly expecting than on the official alone. A company can beat the published consensus and still see its fall if the result comes in below the whisper number, because investors who had already priced in the higher, unofficial expectation are disappointed relative to what they were actually banking on.
Whisper numbers are informal by nature, they aren't published by any official source, aren't standardized across sources when they are shared, and can be based on incomplete or speculative information. They're best treated as a read on and positioning heading into an , not as a more accurate forecast than the analysts' own published numbers.