For companies like HD, LOW or CRM with a fiscal year end around 1/31, does Factset classify these fiscal years when they ended or when they started? For example, with CRM their current fiscal year ends 1/31/19. Is this considered fiscal 2019 or fiscal 2018 in Factset?
its not just FactSet… there are discrepancies across a number of providers in the situation you described… best bet is to add extra columns to data pull that shows FY end/earnings release to confirm and adjust manually if necessary so that sets are comparable. i had a problem with current provider where after January 1… “current FY/ current quarter” rolled over to 2019/ Q1 even though they hadn’t reported 2018/Q4 results… huge headache.
Thanks for your suggestions. It is odd how inconsistent companies are with their fiscal year selection and how data providers such as Factset have not standardized an approach.