US Earnings Release Times in Beijing Time

US earnings release times in Beijing time land in two slots: about 18:00 to 21:00 CST for a company that reports before the US opening bell, and about 04:00 to 04:35 CST the next morning for a company that reports after the US close. China Standard Time sits twelve hours ahead of US Eastern through the American summer and thirteen hours ahead through the American winter, so the whole earnings night slides by an hour twice a year. Half of the calendar is watchable from your evening. The other half prints while you are asleep.

US earnings release times in Beijing time

A US company almost never publishes quarterly results inside the trading session. It picks one of two slots, and it states which one in its own investor relations advisory, usually a week or two ahead.

The pre-open slot runs from roughly 06:00 to 09:00 ET, most of it packed between 07:00 and 08:30. Large banks and industrial names cluster there. The post-close slot is tighter: the press release crosses the wire between 16:00 and 16:35 ET, minutes after the closing auction, and the conference call follows 30 to 60 minutes later. Megacap technology names mostly sit here.

The same clock in CST, while the US is on Eastern Daylight Time (ET plus 12 hours):

• Pre-open releases, 06:00 to 09:00 ET: 18:00 to 21:00 the same evening in Beijing.
• The opening bell, 09:30 ET: 21:30.
• The closing bell, 16:00 ET: 04:00 the next morning.
• Post-close releases, 16:00 to 16:35 ET: 04:00 to 04:35, with the call between about 04:30 and 05:35.

While the US is on Eastern Standard Time (ET plus 13 hours), add an hour to every line above. The pre-open window becomes 19:00 to 22:00, the opening bell 22:30, the closing bell 05:00, and post-close releases 05:00 to 05:35.

China keeps one civil time zone and no daylight saving, dropped in 1991, so none of that movement starts on your side. The US moves its clocks forward in mid March and back in early November. Daylight saving and US market hours walks both changeover weekends, and US market hours around the world carries the same conversion for other cities.

When do earnings headlines hit a Beijing clock?

No feed publishes an official release time, but the newswire headline that carries a result is timestamped to the second. The panel below takes every headline with "earnings" in its title over the third quarter of 2026 and sorts it into 24 buckets by the hour on a Beijing clock. Each bucket also shows the matching US Eastern hour, the offset that held for every session in that quarter.

WITH tagged AS
(
    SELECT
        toHour(toTimeZone(published_utc, 'Asia/Shanghai')) AS cst_hour,
        count()                                            AS items
    FROM global_markets.stocks_news
    WHERE published_utc >= '2026-07-01 00:00:00'
      AND published_utc <  '2026-10-01 00:00:00'
      AND positionCaseInsensitive(title, 'earnings') > 0
    GROUP BY cst_hour
),
hours AS
(
    SELECT
        spine.h                        AS h,
        toUInt32(sum(tagged.items))    AS headlines
    FROM (SELECT arrayJoin(range(24)) AS h) AS spine
    LEFT JOIN tagged ON tagged.cst_hour = spine.h
    GROUP BY spine.h
)
SELECT
    concat(leftPad(toString(h), 2, '0'), ':00')             AS beijing_clock,
    concat(leftPad(toString((h + 12) % 24), 2, '0'), ':00') AS et_clock_summer,
    headlines,
    round(100 * headlines / sum(headlines) OVER (), 2)      AS pct_of_headlines
FROM hours
ORDER BY h

Two parts of the Beijing day carry the load. The 04:00 bucket, which is the 16:00 ET hour, holds 28 headlines, or 3.47% of the quarter. The 19:00 bucket, 07:00 ET, holds 3.96%. The Beijing afternoon is the quiet stretch: 14:00 in Beijing is 02:00 in New York, and that bucket holds 0.74%. Through the Northern winter both busy humps move an hour later on your clock, to 05:00 and 20:00.

Which half of earnings season can you watch live?

A post-close release prints around 04:05 CST, and the trading that follows it happens in the US after-hours session, which runs to 20:00 ET, or 08:00 CST in summer. A pre-open release prints in your evening, and the trading that follows happens in the US premarket, which opens at 04:00 ET, or 16:00 CST. One of those windows sits inside your waking day. The other sits inside your night. After-hours and premarket trading covers how both sessions differ from the regular one.

The panel below pins the heaviest post-close evening of the quarter for AAPL (Apple), in 15 minute buckets across the 16:00 to 20:00 ET window, labelled on both clocks.

WITH busiest_evening AS
(
    SELECT toDate(toTimeZone(window_start, 'America/New_York')) AS d
    FROM global_markets.delayed_stocks_minute_aggs
    WHERE ticker = 'AAPL'
      AND window_start >= '2026-07-01 00:00:00'
      AND window_start <  '2026-10-01 00:00:00'
      AND toHour(toTimeZone(window_start, 'America/New_York')) BETWEEN 16 AND 19
    GROUP BY d
    ORDER BY sum(volume) DESC
    LIMIT 1
)
SELECT
    formatDateTime(toStartOfFifteenMinutes(toTimeZone(window_start, 'Asia/Shanghai')), '%H:%i')    AS beijing_clock,
    formatDateTime(toStartOfFifteenMinutes(toTimeZone(window_start, 'America/New_York')), '%H:%i') AS et_clock,
    formatDateTime(toTimeZone(window_start, 'America/New_York'), '%b %e')                          AS us_evening,
    round(toFloat64(sum(volume)) / 1e6, 2)                                                         AS shares_millions,
    round(toFloat64(sum(transactions)) / 1e3, 1)                                                   AS trades_thousands
FROM global_markets.delayed_stocks_minute_aggs
WHERE ticker = 'AAPL'
  AND window_start >= '2026-07-01 00:00:00'
  AND window_start <  '2026-10-01 00:00:00'
  AND toDate(toTimeZone(window_start, 'America/New_York')) = (SELECT d FROM busiest_evening)
  AND toHour(toTimeZone(window_start, 'America/New_York')) BETWEEN 16 AND 19
GROUP BY beijing_clock, et_clock, us_evening
ORDER BY et_clock

That evening was Jul 30 in New York, which is the following morning in China. The 04:00 to 04:15 CST bucket traded 3.61 million shares across 7.8 thousand separate prints. The last bucket on the chart, 07:45 in Beijing, shows 0.12 million shares. All of it happened between roughly 04:00 and 08:00 on a Beijing morning. Option prices travel across that same gap, and how earnings move option greeks covers what the print does to an option's value.

The pre-open slot looks very different from a Beijing chair. Here is the heaviest premarket morning of the same quarter for JPM (JPMorgan Chase), in 15 minute buckets from 06:00 to 09:00 ET, which is 18:00 to 21:00 in Beijing.

WITH busiest_morning AS
(
    SELECT toDate(toTimeZone(window_start, 'America/New_York')) AS d
    FROM global_markets.delayed_stocks_minute_aggs
    WHERE ticker = 'JPM'
      AND window_start >= '2026-07-01 00:00:00'
      AND window_start <  '2026-10-01 00:00:00'
      AND toHour(toTimeZone(window_start, 'America/New_York')) BETWEEN 6 AND 8
    GROUP BY d
    ORDER BY sum(volume) DESC
    LIMIT 1
)
SELECT
    formatDateTime(toStartOfFifteenMinutes(toTimeZone(window_start, 'Asia/Shanghai')), '%H:%i')    AS beijing_clock,
    formatDateTime(toStartOfFifteenMinutes(toTimeZone(window_start, 'America/New_York')), '%H:%i') AS et_clock,
    formatDateTime(toTimeZone(window_start, 'America/New_York'), '%b %e')                          AS us_morning,
    round(toFloat64(sum(volume)) / 1e3, 1)                                                         AS shares_thousands
FROM global_markets.delayed_stocks_minute_aggs
WHERE ticker = 'JPM'
  AND window_start >= '2026-07-01 00:00:00'
  AND window_start <  '2026-10-01 00:00:00'
  AND toDate(toTimeZone(window_start, 'America/New_York')) = (SELECT d FROM busiest_morning)
  AND toHour(toTimeZone(window_start, 'America/New_York')) BETWEEN 6 AND 8
GROUP BY beijing_clock, et_clock, us_morning
ORDER BY et_clock

That morning was Jul 14 in New York, the same calendar date in China. The final bucket on the chart, 20:45 Beijing time, traded 13.1 thousand shares, and the US regular session opened 45 minutes later at 21:30 your time. Every minute of that sits inside an ordinary Beijing evening.

The weekday edge: a Thursday print lands on your Friday

Earnings season is not spread evenly across the week, and the day of the week itself changes between the two slots. A pre-open release stays on the same date in both calendars. A post-close release crosses midnight and reaches you on your next day. The panel splits the quarter's earnings headlines by US weekday, using the 05:00 to 09:00 ET band and the 16:00 to 20:00 ET band from the clock panel above, and names the Beijing day a post-close print arrives on.

SELECT
    formatDateTime(toTimeZone(published_utc, 'America/New_York'), '%a')                      AS us_weekday,
    formatDateTime(toTimeZone(published_utc, 'America/New_York') + INTERVAL 1 DAY, '%a')     AS beijing_day_post_close,
    countIf(toHour(toTimeZone(published_utc, 'America/New_York')) BETWEEN 5 AND 8)           AS pre_open_headlines,
    countIf(toHour(toTimeZone(published_utc, 'America/New_York')) BETWEEN 16 AND 19)         AS post_close_headlines
FROM global_markets.stocks_news
WHERE published_utc >= '2026-07-01 00:00:00'
  AND published_utc <  '2026-10-01 00:00:00'
  AND positionCaseInsensitive(title, 'earnings') > 0
  AND toDayOfWeek(toTimeZone(published_utc, 'America/New_York')) <= 5
GROUP BY us_weekday, beijing_day_post_close
ORDER BY any(toDayOfWeek(toTimeZone(published_utc, 'America/New_York')))

Thursday is the clearest case for a Beijing reader: 54 post-close headlines over the quarter, each one arriving on a Beijing Fri morning, with the after-hours trading running from about 04:00 to 08:00 your time and the next regular US session not opening until 21:30. Friday is the mirror image, with 10 pre-open headlines, all of them printing on a Friday evening in China ahead of a full US session that runs until 04:00 on your Saturday. A Friday post-close release is the awkward one. It arrives at about 04:05 on a Saturday, and the next US session is Monday evening your time.

How to confirm one company's release slot

A third-party calendar often carries an estimated date and a guessed slot. The company's own advisory carries the confirmed one.

1. Open the company's investor relations page and find the earnings advisory press release. It names the date and the slot in plain words, either before market open or after market close, plus the call time in ET.
2. Convert the call time rather than the release time if you plan to listen live. A 17:00 ET call is 05:00 the next morning in Beijing while the US is on summer time, and 06:00 while it is on winter time.
3. Check which side of the US clock change the date falls on. Mid March to early November is ET plus 12. The rest of the year is ET plus 13.
4. Look again in the week before the date. Companies move these dates, and the advisory is the first place the change appears.

How to find a stock's earnings date covers where that confirmed date surfaces first.

FAQ

What time do US earnings come out in Beijing time?

There are two windows. A company reporting before the US open publishes between about 18:00 and 21:00 CST the same evening. A company reporting after the US close publishes between about 04:00 and 04:35 CST the next morning, with the conference call half an hour to an hour after that. Add one hour to both windows from early November to mid March.

Does the Beijing time of a US earnings release change in winter?

China Standard Time never moves. US Eastern does, twice a year, so the gap is twelve hours through the American summer and thirteen through the American winter. A release stays at the same ET minute and reaches you an hour later on your clock through the Northern winter.

Can I follow the first trading after a post-close report from China?

That trading happens in the US after-hours session, which runs until 20:00 ET, or 08:00 CST in summer. In China that falls in the early morning. Access to the session depends on your broker, and the quantity of trading there is a fraction of the regular session.

If a company reports Thursday after the close, what day is it in China?

Friday. A Thursday 16:05 ET release is 04:05 CST on Friday while the US is on summer time, and 05:05 CST on Friday while it is on winter time. The regular US session that follows runs from your Friday 21:30 to your Saturday 04:00.

Do more US companies report before the open or after the close?

Both windows are busy. Across the third quarter of 2026, the 16:00 ET hour carried 3.47% of earnings headlines and the 07:00 ET hour carried 3.96%. Pre-open releases skew toward banks and industrial names, post-close releases toward large technology names.

Every panel above ships with the SQL that produced it, so you can see exactly which timestamps went into which bucket. To convert a specific company's release slot into your own clock, ask the question in plain English on the Strasmore terminal.