"It's the most embarrassing thing to say as an analyst."
It is a running joke that on earnings conference calls an analyst will start their question to company management with some variation of the phrase "Great quarter, guys." And now we know just how often that happens.
On Wednesday, Bloomberg's Drew Armstrong published a report chronicling the history of "Great quarter, guys," finding that from 2007 to 2014, analysts said this phrase to management on 1,256 earnings calls.
In his report, Armstrong quotes SunTrust Robinson Humphrey analyst Eric Selle who said telling management they had a great quarter is, "like everyone getting a medal in soccer ... It's the most embarrassing thing to say as an analyst."
Selle, Armstrong notes, once told Ford management on an earnings call: "Don't mean to be cheesy, but that was a very good quarter."
Bloomberg also has this handy graphic, showing just how often analysts tell companies that they did, in fact, have a great quarter.
—Bloomberg Markets (@markets) April 29, 2015
