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Pre-Markets Give Some Back; Housing Starts Lower; PG, ABT Beat

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Wednesday, October 19, 2022

An eventful pre-market has dragged futures into negative territory, following key housing data and more big-name Q3 earnings beats. The markets seem in a mood to give back some of the boon they’ve garnered over the past 3 of 4 sessions: the Dow is -150 points at this hour, the S&P 500 is -25 and the Nasdaq is -70 points.

Housing Starts for the month of September came in lower than expectations, with 1.439 million seasonally adjusted, annualized starts beneath the 1.47 million expected. It’s a fairly big drop from the previous month’s downwardly revised 1.566 million, but still higher than the July cycle-low of 1.377 million. Still, the right direction for the housing market if we’re looking to curb inflation, of which home prices represents a big chunk.

Building Permits, a relative forward indicator of future starts, actually ticked up in September to 1.564 million from 1.542 million seasonally adjusted, annualized units in August. But this still represents a leg-down from the high 1.6-millions we were seeing earlier in the summer and 1.879 million at the 12-month peak. The August print represents lows not seen since the pandemic; again, this is the sort of thing the Fed wants to see in order to help bring down inflation.

Procter & Gamble (PG - Free Report) posted fiscal Q1 results this morning, keeping earnings season successful overall to this point, with earnings of $1.57 per share beating the Zacks consensus by 2 cents. Revenues in the quarter of $20.61 billion were up from the expected $20.45 billion, and swung to a yearly gain of +1% from an expected loss. Organic revenues grew +7% in the quarter. P&G has just one earnings miss in the past five years.

Abbott Labs (ABT - Free Report) also posted a positive surprise in its Q3 report this morning: earnings of $1.15 per share easily surpassed the 91 cents expected (though still down from the $1.40 per share in the year-ago quarter), for a +26.37% beat. Revenues topped estimates by +8.67% to $10.41 billion in the quarter (though again down from the $10.93 billion a year ago). Abbott has also only posted one earnings miss in the past five years. For more on ABT’s earnings, click here.

After today’s closing bell, we’ll see another slew of earnings reports, including from Tesla (TSLA - Free Report) , which is expected to bring earnings growth of more than +50% year over year on +62% growth in revenues. We already know the EV leader produced 365K vehicles in Q3 and delivered 343K, which helps analysts in their forecasts for the Zacks Rank #3 (Hold) company with a Zacks Style Score of A.

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