when executives or equity analysts talk about visibility they are referring to sales or earnings management may comment on visibility in press releases during earnings conference calls or at investment bank sponsored meetings or conferences analysts can discuss visibility in their research reports with clients to help them make investment decisions for their portfolios 
understanding visibilityvisibility occurs when a company s executive team or market analysts make predictions about its future earnings or sales figures having visibility is one indicator that the processes put into place by the management team are followed by the rest of the team companies are optimized for better performance if management has high and full visibility in the organization high visibility generally means they are confident in their projections low visibility on the other hand means the opposite that their confidence is low low visibility primarily happens when there is a shift in the economic cycle or changes in the market executives typically prefer not to discuss low visibility as this may make investors feel uneasy but it s not entirely avoidable so it may be necessary that management set reasonable expectations in the market for the company s stock management that boasts high visibility on the other hand should offer caveats to its optimistic outlook in case expectations for growth are not realized in the future visibility is categorized as high and low high for high confidence in predictions and low for low confidence for future performance expressing visibility in timeaside from the low to high portrayal spectrum visibility can be characterized by the length of time for example it can cover the short term as in a single quarter or the long term it may even allude to a specific interval such as from now to the end of the calendar year a company with low short term earnings visibility may be questioned why this is the case if a competitor has high short term visibility a company that states it has strong earnings visibility over the long term will be regarded in a favorable light by investors an analysis of the reasons for this high visibility would be useful for investors to better understand a company s business model the economy s effect on visibilitythe amount of visibility for a company is largely dependent on the state of the economy when an economy is stable and growing a company may have high visibility to confidently project sales or earnings but when the economy is weak or at cross currents a company will not likely have much visibility when times are uncertain a business is more likely to refrain from providing sales or earnings guidance to analysts and investors 