To read more about how GR can be used for accounting research, our paper introducing and utilizing the data is available on SSRN:  

• Mayew, William J. and Pinto, Jedson and Wu, Xiaoxi, On the Usefulness of Guidance Reports (2026). Available here: link

Abstract:

We extract corporate issued guidance from over 23,000 LSEG Guidance Reports (GR) of S&P 1500 firms from 2005 to 2021 and compare the contents to the commonly used LSEG I/B/E/S Guidance (IG) database. IG is a subset of GR containing only quantitative guidance instances that are standardized to be comparable to analyst consensus estimates. Our sample contains 1.735 million GR guidance instances across more than 180 guidance items, far exceeding the 0.261 million instances across the 13 items from IG for the same firm-years. Qualitative guidance is one important driver of this coverage gap. GR contains 1.116 million qualitative guidance instances that by definition are not in IG.  IG also does not capture GR quantitative guidance beyond its 13 items, and for the 13 items that do overlap, the coverage gap is not random. LSEG processes quantitative GR guidance for the 13 items consistent with cost and benefit considerations. Our findings suggest researchers should be aware of the extent and nature of IG omissions when studying guidance. We identify research opportunities stemming from the GR-IG coverage gap, as well as from the rich guidance features GR uniquely provides, including guidance underpinning text, disclosure channels, and source speakers. Our findings complement and update prior work suggesting that the IG database fails to fully capture management guidance and highlight how GR’s more comprehensive data coverage can advance academics’ understanding of management guidance.