In addition, when bonuses are aligned with overall company performance, these strategies provide an incentive for earnings management to occur outside of the traditional accounting and financial reporting functions and instead within the rank and file of company operations.
"We think that the learning space is going to provide tremendous growth for earnings," said Richard Harrington, chief executive of Thomson, which has units that publish reference and research books for the library and education markets as well as electronic offerings.
The company declined to provide detailed forecasts for earnings in 2004 and 2005, but said it expected to meet a goal of $500 million to $725 million of net income by 2006, with cash flow of $1.9 billion to $2.2 billion.
This should provide further fuel for earnings growth in a few years, when Britain's economy recovers and interest rates start to rise: higher interest rates drive up returns on loans and mortgages without an equivalent increase in the rates depositors are paid.
AT&T's recently-published annual report provided guidance for earnings-per-share of approximately $3.50 for fiscal 2018.
Two years ago, a low-level employee at Google's outside investor relations firm, Market Street Partners, was connected to the convicted former hedge fund manager Raj Rajaratnam for providing details of earnings for Google and Akamai Technologies.
To be sure, many Wall Street analysts remain optimistic that this summer's tax rebates and the Federal Reserve's interest rate cuts will provide a quick tonic for earnings at companies of all stripes.
The company provided full-year guidance for earnings between $3.95 a share and $4.05 a share and for sales increases in the low-to-mid single digit percentage.
In January when reporting earnings for the fourth quarter and year, Motorola provided first-quarter guidance for earnings per share of five cents to seven cents on sales of $6.4 billion to $6.8 billion.
State Wage Record files maintained as part of the UI system provide quarterly earnings for all employees in UI-covered firms within a state.
In case a participant was reluctant to provide these data a proxy for earnings can be derived from function, age and working hours.
