Different market data providers having different data, who is right?

One is forward Price/Earnings; the other is TTM. Here are some other values.

https://www.morningstar.com/stocks/xnys/sne/financials
Price/Earnings 13.76

https://www.morningstar.com/stocks/xnys/sne/valuation
Price/Earnings 13.78
Price/Forward Earnings 22.62

https://finviz.com/quote.ashx?t=SNE
P/E 13.90
Forward P/E 25.27

https://www.barchart.com/stocks/quotes/SNE/overview
Price/Earnings ttm14.35

https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/SNE/key-statistics?p=SNE
Trailing P/E 13.76
Forward P/E 22.62

https://www.marketwatch.com/investing/stock/sne?mod=quote_search
P/E RATIO13.94

So you have your choice (and morningstar and yahoo are inconsistent with themselves). Barchart seems to have a value least similar to any other, and the 23.87 on yahoo's main page looks like it was mislabeled TTM.

When I developed software for a bank's reference data system, we had similar problems (different values for the same statistic from different vendors). Someone decided a ranking for each vendor, statistic pair, and the system chose the highest-ranking vendor with available data.
 
Yahoo is definetely broken sometimes, for the same stock on a different exchange shows
https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/6758.T/key-statistics?p=6758.T
PE Ratio (TTM) 13.75
EPS (TTM) 861.63

same stock on USA exchange:
https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/SNE?p=SNE&.tsrc=fin-srch
PE Ratio (TTM) 23.87
EPS (TTM) 4.76

I found Marketwatch 5 year history useful:
https://www.marketwatch.com/investing/stock/6758/financials?countrycode=jp&mod=mw_quote_tab

using their numbers
PE TTM
11,845 / 461.23 should be 25.68 if their data is correct (price of share / diluted earnings per share)

Forward PE is more tricksy, it should use the data from the last 4 quarters I think
 
I had a similar issue when I was originally trying to use historical fundamentals.

Fundamentals where the reporting currency is different from the trading currency is hard. Do you use an average FX rate for the period? Today's FX Rate? The FX rate at the date of the figure?

Earnings are difficult too. Inlcuding or excluding extraordinary items.

For "per-share" figures do you use the current shares outstanding? Or an average across the period? Or the shares outstanding on the end of quarter date?

What about copmanies that have multiple share lines?
What about convertible instruments that dilute? Do you incorporate them?

Good fundamentals are hard to do. Never found any place that does it right all the time, and I think I've spent more time contacting customer support than using the data due to anomalies everywhere.

adamovicm said:
Forward PE is more tricksy, it should use the data from the last 4 quarters I think
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Forward PE uses analyst estimated forecasts of EPS. It has nothing to do with previous quarters.
 
It's not really a question of who is right. There could be several factors responsible for the differences in data. To start with, some data providers such as Tickdata offer corrected data, while others like algoseek offer raw and "as is".
Also, the sources of the data matter. Data obtained from exchanges' archives or third-party ticker plants is subject to exchange publishing mistakes such as out-of-sequence packets, as compared to data collected raw and "as is" from the exchanges.
 
jharmon said:
Forward PE uses analyst estimated forecasts of EPS. It has nothing to do with previous quarters.
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well, you could still compare your Forward P/E with the average current P/E of the last 4 quarters, or even better, compare trailing 12m P/E with Forward P/E

a lot of successful strategies can use these,
 
adamovicm said:
https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/SNE?p=SNE&.tsrc=fin-srch
shows PE (TTM) 23.87

https://www.investing.com/equities/sony
shows PE 13.79

If I understand correctly PE (TTM) and PE should be the same, both indicators are for the last 12 months?
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you have to be careful to read the factor definition of the data provider, there is a lot of ways to calculate those

current P/E is usually based on Last/Recent Fiscal Year Reported and current Price

Then some use non-GAAP EPS, others would use basic EPS (GAAP), and some Fully Diluted EPS (GAAP)
 
It seems that many market providers use the last 4 quarters to calculate PE, rather than the last full year data.

Forward PE with using analyst data... honestly from what I see, analysts are infrequently wrong so I don't find it useful.
 
adamovicm said:
It seems that many market providers use the last 4 quarters to calculate PE, rather than the last full year data.
More...

That's fairly standard, given the last annual can be out of date by up to 15 months.
It's known as TTM (trailing 12 months).
 
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