Trailing Twelve Months (TTM)
The sum of a company's financials over the most recent four quarters. A rolling one-year window that updates every quarter, used for revenue, EPS, and EBITDA.
Trailing Twelve Months (TTM)
Trailing twelve months, abbreviated TTM, is the total of a financial metric over the most recent four reported quarters. Rather than relying on the last fiscal year, which can be up to a year stale, TTM builds a rolling one-year figure that refreshes every time a new quarter is reported. It is used for almost any flow metric: TTM revenue, TTM EPS, TTM EBITDA, TTM free cash flow.
Why it exists
A company's most recent annual report can be eleven months old by the time you read it. A lot changes in that window. TTM solves the staleness problem by always covering the latest four quarters, so it captures the newest available full year of performance without waiting for the next annual filing. It also smooths out seasonality: because it always spans exactly four quarters, a retailer's strong holiday quarter and weak spring quarter are both included, avoiding the distortion of annualizing a single period.
How to calculate it
TTM Metric = Most Recent 4 Quarters Summed
A common shortcut when you only have annual plus interim data:
TTM = Last Full Fiscal Year + Current Year-to-Date - Prior Year Same Year-to-Date
This adds the newest partial-year performance and strips out the portion of the old fiscal year it replaces.
Worked example
A company is two quarters into its fiscal year. You want TTM revenue.
- Last full fiscal year revenue: $1,000m
- First two quarters this year: $560m
- First two quarters last year: $480m
The $1,080m figure reflects the company's most recent full year of sales, capturing the $80m of year-over-year growth that the stale annual number of $1,000m would miss.
Where you see it
TTM is the default basis for most valuation ratios. The trailing P/E ratio uses TTM earnings per share. EV/EBITDA is typically quoted on TTM EBITDA. Price-to-sales uses TTM revenue. When a data provider shows a ratio without specifying, it is almost always TTM. This matters because a ratio is only comparable if you know the earnings window: comparing one company's TTM P/E to another's forward P/E is comparing two different things.
The limitation
TTM is backward-looking by construction. It tells you what a company actually did over the past year, not what it will do. For a fast-growing or rapidly deteriorating business, the trailing window can look very different from the year ahead, which is why analysts pair TTM with forward estimates. TTM is the reliable, factual anchor; forward figures are the forecast. Reading both together tells you where the business has been and where the market expects it to go.
Frequently asked questions
What does trailing twelve months (TTM) mean?
It is the sum of a financial metric over the most recent four reported quarters, a rolling one-year window that updates each quarter. It gives the latest full year of performance without waiting for the annual report and smooths out seasonality.
How do you calculate a TTM figure?
Add the last four quarters together, or take the last full fiscal year, add the current year-to-date, and subtract the prior year's same year-to-date. Both methods produce the most recent twelve months of the metric.
Is TTM the same as the last fiscal year?
No. The last fiscal year is a fixed period that can be nearly a year stale, while TTM always covers the four most recent quarters and refreshes every quarter. TTM captures newer performance that the annual figure misses.