Positive earnings surprises - when profits beat consensus analyst estimates - can have a huge impact on a company's share price. These surprises show that management can both manage and exceed expectations, not to mention "beats" often lead to share-price gains as investors realize Wall Street might be underappreciating these overachievers.

For instance, a FactSet Research study examining Standard & Poor's 500-stock index components from Q4 2008 to Q1 2018 found that companies that posted positive EPS surprises gained 1.24% on average in the four-day window surrounding their earnings announcement.

Far more significant was what earnings surprises portended for long-term performance. Golden Capital and FactSet Research tracked S&P 500 companies over 15 years and found that those that reported positive EPS surprises experienced bigger share price gains than those that had not - even in cases where the stock's short-term response to positive surprises was minimal. While the S&P 500 more than tripled over the study's timeline, positive surprisers more than quadrupled.

The lesson: Companies that properly manage expectations and can "beat the Street" regularly tend to provide stronger long-term performance - even if the initial response isn't strongly bullish.

Here are 19 great stocks that have delivered positive earnings surprises averaging 10% or better over the past four quarters. Many of these stocks are off the beaten path, most of these stocks have generated double-digit annual earnings growth over the past five years, and all produced double-digit EPS gains in their most recent fiscal year.

Bristol-Myers Squibb

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Drugmaker Bristol-Myers Squibb (BMY, $45.24) is a pure-play specialty pharmaceutical giant with industry-leading franchises in oncology, hematology, cardiovascular health and immunology. It owns top-selling drugs such as Opdivo and Yervoy (cancer), Eliquis (heart disease) and Orencia (inflammation).

It's about to get bigger, too. Bristol-Myers shareholders recently approved the $74 billion buyout of biotech company Celgene (CELG). The merger will create the No. 1 drug company in oncology and cardiovascular health and a top-five competitor in immunology and inflammation treatment. Post-merger, BMY will own nine blockbuster drugs (greater than $1 billion in annual sales). Meanwhile, its pipeline will feature six new products poised for near-term launch that are expected to add more than $15 billion in revenues, 10 drugs in Phase III studies and more than 50 new products in earlier stages of development.

Other benefits: The merger will reduce Bristol-Myers' reliance on its top three drugs from 70% of sales to just 45% and create $2.5 billion in synergies. The company expects the transaction to be 40% accretive to EPS in the first year and 10% accretive each year thereafter through 2025.

The company's sales improved by 9% last year and adjusted EPS rose 32%, fueled by big sales gains for Opdivo and Eliquis. And encouragingly, the company has beaten EPS estimates for four consecutive quarters, with positive earnings surprises ranging from 11% to 16%. BMY's next earnings report is due out before the opening bell on Thursday, April 25.

CACI International

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Mid-cap defense contractor CACI International (CACI, $187.51) supplies business systems, command-and-control hardware and software, cybersecurity products and other high-tech solutions, primarily to agencies of the U.S. government.

CACI plans to enhance