Listed companies seem to have a knack of alienating investors and harming their share price by providing forecasts that are way off target, according to a global study.

More than 70 per cent of companies admit to forecasting errors, and the average company forecast is off by as much as 13 per cent. According to a KPMG report, Forecasting with confidence, found that over the past three years only 1 per cent of companies hit their forecasts. Only 22 per cent had come within 5 per cent of being too high or too low.

And of course, their forecasting incompetence hurt shareholders. Executives in the survey estimated that these errors had knocked 6 per cent off the share price.

To investors the message is clear: be wary of company forecasts, and put in the leg work with your own research.