97,000 was above what several prominent forecasts had.
The meet expectations game is de facto Wall Street financial fraud. They very aggressively, very openly use it either direction to manipulate the market as they see fit. It's one of the few direct levers of fraud they have that won't get them thrown into prison.
And on the other side, you have companies like Cisco that for a decade had a notorious reputation for beating estimates perfectly, by a penny. Every single time, like magic. Obvious financial gaming.
The FactSet sell-side consensus was 99,000. That’s normally what people look at when they quote “expectations”.
And for the most part analysts, I don’t know if you’ve ever met one, are honest people. There can be perverse incentives at times, but calling stock analysts fraudsters isn’t accurate
