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Honestly, the whisper numbers are usually pretty off too. Got to love those guys on the sell side.
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Only reason I see for doing it is fear of breaking from the herd. However, when I use "whisper", I am generally referring to where the buyside is.
The number necessary for the stock to work could be very different than sell-side consensus.
From my experience whisper has always just been the most "up-to-date" consensus number that circulates around. I'm a FICC guy though.
I hate to sound like a dick, but some of the other responses in this thread show a distinct lack of experience in the business.
Sell side analysts really do report their "true" estimates. The whisper number is just what's circulating in the rumor mill before a report, nothing more and nothing less.
For example, let's look at the jobs report. Let's say the consensus estimate is for +100K, but the recent real-time economic data suggest the number could be higher. Some economists will update their estimate higher, but many will not unless there is a clear reason to do so. As we get closer to the report, traders and analysts (buy side and sell side) will start talking to each other about how they think the report is going to beat the consensus estimate ... there's your whisper number. It's more of a directional estimate than a distinct number. The talking heads on the financial entertainment channels make it seem more precise than it really is.
The same concept applies to company earnings and anything else where there is a consensus estimate (e.g., "looks like company XYZ might miss earnings given the recent sharp move in the Euro, pass it on").
I really hate when people talk about whisper numbers. I had one of our salesmen IM me last week asking what the whisper number for company X was. Wtf does that even mean? The number that we publish is our best estimate of what the company's reported earnings will be. It's not like the CEO calls and whispers a number in our ear before they release. Consensus estimates are posted on Bloomberg and Thomson for everyone to see. If an analyst is secretly saying he thinks earnings will be that much different than what he has published then why would you listen to him anyway?
jqbuyside has it covered. Unlike the sell-side, the buy-side doesn't publish their estimates. Also, buy-siders talk to each other pretty often. You get calls and specific questions on certain companies in clusters. Somebody gets a non-consensus estimate that they put money on. Boom. Whisper number.
Pet peeve: the sell-side gets criticized for inaccuracy all the time. The average buy-sider isn't better. People just don't know it. And on the sell-side, you get lots of pressure to "tailor" numbers to the whims of the DoR. Lots of politics. I don't know how that isn't obvious to everyone.
Sell-side analysts will sometimes set their numbers low enough that the company can beat them, as a "courtesy" to the management teams. If a particular analyst has numbers that are too high for a quarter, some companies will pressure them to quietly take their numbers down. Management teams have a lot of influence over the analysts that cover them because no one wants to piss them off and lose access.
The whisper number can be a combination of the sell-side's true unbiased numbers (they will rarely give this number straight up, it's more of a game where they subtly hint that their numbers have upside), what the buyside is expecting, and sometimes whatever the media is hyping in the case of widely anticipated events (for instance 1 trillion for LTRO #2).
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