[widgeon13]

The analyst do not predict the company performance on a quarterly or annual basis, that is actually derived from company provided information (dividend, sales figures, EBITDA, whatever) and usually reported that way.

I worked for a Canadian company for 30 years and was an officer of the company (for what it's worth) now retired, we would meet with certain industry analysts and give them projected figures and report previous performance results. They would then report those figures to the financial community. This would lead to a level of expectation and obviously if the targets were not achieved the stock price would usually drop or their had to be some good explanation.

The sad thing is that even when companies achieve their target, in most cases the stock drops. It's only when company dramatically exceeds expectation that the stock seems to react in a positive manner.