Fiscal quarter
Also written: fiscal year
A company’s own three-month accounting period, which does not necessarily line up with the calendar.
Companies divide their financial year into four quarters, but they are free to choose when that year starts. Many follow the calendar. Plenty do not.
This matters when you compare two companies, or read a headline. Apple’s financial year ends in late September, so what Apple calls its first quarter is the October to December period, the one containing Christmas. Its third quarter is April to June.
The safest habit is to ignore the quarter number and read the actual dates, which every filing states.
The usual mistake. Apple’s financial year is 52 or 53 weeks long. Roughly once every five or six years a quarter contains fourteen weeks instead of thirteen, which inflates that quarter’s figures for a purely calendar reason.
See also
This definition is part of the EPTA5 lexicon, written so that a reader who does not work in finance can follow our market notes without stopping. It is general information and not investment advice. Read the notes.