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When Will Strong Earnings Growth Come Back?

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Earnings growth has finally turned positive, with Q3 earnings on track to be up +0.9% from the same period last year. This isn’t much growth to get excited about, but it’s nevertheless an improvement over what we have been seeing in the recent past. Please recall that earnings growth has been in negative territory over the preceding 5 quarters. So the fact that it is turning positive is something of a milestone.

With respect to the Q3 scorecard, we now have results from 150 S&P 500 members that combined account for 38.6% of the index’s total market capitalization. Total earnings for these 150 index members are up +4.1% from the same period last year on +2.3% higher revenues, with 76% beating EPS estimates and 57.3% beating revenues estimates. This is better performance than we have seen from the same group of 150 index members in the recent past.

A number of well known companies like Caterpillar (CAT - Free Report) , General Motors (GM - Free Report) , 3M (MM) and others have recently guided lower, but others are showing a lot more resilience. We saw that Proctor & Gamble (PG), DuPont (DD - Free Report) , United Technologies and others came out with a lot of momentum.

All of this is helping Q4 estimates hold up pretty well, with Q4 earnings expected to be up +5.1% from the same period last year. Stability in Q4 estimates through the rest of this reporting cycle will be the most tangible sign of improvement in the overall earnings picture.


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