META earnings: EPS surprise magnitude vs earnings-day move (last ~3 years)
Surprising result up front: META’s quarterly EPS surprise magnitude barely moves the needle on the stock’s earnings-day reaction. I matched each of the last 11 quarterly EPS surprises to the first regular-session close-to-close return and ran Pearson/Spearman correlations and simple OLS fits; the signed Pearson r is essentially zero (r ≈ -0.05), indicating no reliable linear link between beat/miss size and the direction or size of the next-session return.
Big one-day moves do happen — the mean absolute earnings-day return is about 8.44% — but they don’t track headline EPS beats in any consistent way. The size-on-size relationship even leans negative but is statistically inconclusive; the detailed charts, regressions and event-level data below show the full evidence and how guidance, commentary and positioning appear to matter more than the raw EPS surprise.
For META over the past ~3 years, does the size of the quarterly EPS surprise actually drive the size of the earnings-day move — is a bigger beat rewarded with a proportionally bigger pop — or is the reaction basically disconnected from the headline number? Thesis: the correlation between surprise magnitude and the absolute earnings-day return is weak, because the market trades forward guidance and positioning rather than the reported EPS beat, so how far the stock jumps barely tracks how big the surprise was.
How this was measured
For each META quarterly earnings with a known release date in the last ~3 years, the earnings-day reaction is defined as the close-to-close return of the first trading day on or after the reported_date (this captures both after-hours and pre-market releases as the next regular session's move). We pair that return with the reported EPS surprise_percentage (data-source units are percentage points) and compute Pearson/Spearman correlations for the signed relation (surprise vs signed return) and for the size relation (|surprise| vs |return|). A simple OLS fit reports slope and R²; slope is interpreted as return per 1 percentage-point of surprise.
The key numbers
Reading the numbers
Across 11 earnings events, the average absolute earnings-day move was 0.0844407 while the correlation between surprise and signed return is essentially zero (Pearson r = -0.0508, p = 0.882), so surprise size alone shows no clear linear link to the direction of the move.
The charts
This scatter plots each quarter's EPS surprise (2.4055–23.1801) against the actual close-to-close return (ranging -0.1691 to 0.1564). The points are all over the place rather than forming an upward line you’d expect if bigger beats produced bigger pops; Pearson r = -0.0508 with p = 0.882 indicates no detectable linear relationship. The OLS slope is effectively zero (slope per +10pp surprise = -0.0068648, R² = 0.002585), so a larger reported surprise did not meaningfully predict a bigger signed move in this sample.
This scatter uses absolute values: |surprise| (same 2.4055–23.1801 range) versus |return| (0.0207–0.1691, mean 0.0844407). Rather than a positive connection, the Pearson r = -0.4026 points to a modest negative relationship — bigger surprises were not followed by larger absolute moves and in this small sample even trended slightly the other way. Visually the cloud of points lacks a clear monotonic rise, so surprise magnitude does not reliably predict how far the stock jumps on earnings.
META earnings events — surprise vs earnings-day move
| reported_trading_day | surprise_pct | earnings_day_return | abs_surprise_pct | abs_earnings_day_return |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2023-07-26 | 2.41 | 0.0657 | 2.41 | 0.0657 |
| 2023-10-25 | 20.94 | -0.0673 | 20.94 | 0.0673 |
| 2024-02-01 | 7.46 | 0.1564 | 7.46 | 0.1564 |
| 2024-04-24 | 9.03 | -0.1691 | 9.03 | 0.1691 |
| 2024-07-31 | 7.95 | 0.1091 | 7.95 | 0.1091 |
| 2024-10-30 | 13.99 | -0.0551 | 13.99 | 0.0551 |
| 2025-01-29 | 20.06 | 0.0207 | 20.06 | 0.0207 |
| 2025-04-30 | 23.18 | 0.0533 | 23.18 | 0.0533 |
| 2025-07-30 | 21.84 | 0.0977 | 21.84 | 0.0977 |
| 2025-10-29 | 8.05 | -0.0769 | 8.05 | 0.0769 |
| 2026-01-28 | 8.56 | 0.0574 | 8.56 | 0.0574 |
The takeaway
Short answer: no — across the last 11 META quarters there’s essentially no reliable link from the EPS surprise size to the earnings-day move. The signed Pearson correlation is basically zero (r = -0.0508, p = 0.882) and the OLS for signed returns explains almost nothing (R² = 0.0026). The size-on-size relation leans negative (|surprise| vs |return| Pearson r = -0.4026) but that pattern is not statistically convincing (p = 0.220 and abs OLS R² = 0.162), and a +10pp surprise maps to only about a -0.69% change in the session move by the reported slope. Put bluntly: big earnings-day moves (mean absolute move ~8.44%) happen often, but they don’t track the headline EPS beat or miss in a consistent, predictable way — the signed relationship is a clear null and the size relationship is at best a weak, inconclusive lean. Practical takeaway: don’t expect a proportionally larger pop from a larger EPS beat; guidance, commentary and positioning are likely the drivers you should watch instead.
The fine print
- Sample is small — only 11 earnings events, so correlations are noisy and sensitive to single quarters.
- This analysis isolates EPS surprise only; revenue, guidance and margin commentary are excluded and can dominate moves.
- Timing is normalized to the next regular session (close-to-close); intra-day pre/post-market gap details are not separated.