Last Fiscal Year - LFY

See: Fiscal Year.

So...a fiscal year is sometimes different from a calendar year. "Fiscal," meaning the 365 days under which a company evaluates or measures its annual financial performance. Many companies start the year Jan 1 and end it Dec 31,but many don't.

Why? Well, the common example revolves around a brick and mortar retailer like Macy's. If they report their year December 31 (or with that ending), then they cloud a ton of really important information...like, how many people who bought Christmas things took them back a week or so later? Was the year then really successful or...not?

So Macy's moved to a June 30 Fiscal when not a ton was happening (how many people go to a big department store ahead of July 4th?). So the last fiscal year just refers to whenever the last annual counting of financial performance happened; it's not necessarily the last calendar year, but rather the last reporter year of reckoning.

And yeah, we know, Macy's is on life support, so we'll have to come up with other examples soon, sadly.