The bar Sunrun cleared this morning was $0.26 a share. It printed $0.56, which the write-up scores as a 115% surprise, revenue $1.1 billion and 36.74% above estimates, and $RUN is +22.75% premarket on it.
Read the surprise as a measurement of the bar, not the business. A consensus of $0.26 was set by analysts covering a stock that had lost 52.8% this year against a 10.6% gain for the S&P 500. The lower the bar sits, the taller any clearance looks when you report it in percent.
The symbol has its own file for mornings like this. Forty prior sessions where Sunrun opened at least 5% above the previous close: 38% of them closed above that open, 62% closed below it, and the median finish was 1.39% under the open. Descriptive, not a forecast, and none of those forty sessions knew anything about Q3.
A 115% surprise and a 52.8% drawdown are the same year, reported in two different units.
#SEZL beat too: $1.37 a share against $1.28, revenue $166.5 million, 8.14% above estimates, +28.03% premarket. Its year before the print was +92.9% against the index. Same word, beat, arriving from opposite ends of the chart: one gap is a company stepping over a bar the street had lowered, the other is a company already priced for a high one. Neither reading is in the beat percentage.