In the United States, the earnings season did not get off to the best possible start. Companies continue to improve their results, in general, and also exceed the growth expectations expected by analysts, but not at the pace at which they usually do: with a third of companies in the S&P 500 having already represented the market, 75% They managed to exceed the revenue expectations set by analysts. However, these data are the lowest ever observed since the last quarter of 2022.and confirms fears of a slowdown in economic activity in the United States. In the coming days, there may be the key to confirming whether the season will be disappointing, or whether it will be reversed, since 42% of the index capitalization will present its accounts this week.
Although the U.S. earnings season got off to a good start, with major banking sector startups far exceeding expectations, as the days passed, morale cooled to the point where the percentage of companies which recorded positive results Analysts surprised by their accounts are at their lowest in two years, since the end of 2022. Only 75% of companies reporting results improved on analyst expectations.a third of the total S&P 500 having already presented its accounts.
The data it collects Bloomberg Intelligence They confirm that the sectors having the most difficulty in beating analyst-backed earnings expectations are industrials, telecommunications and utilities. In all three cases, the average surprise has been negative so far, with public sector companies reporting revenue on average 4.41% below expectations; In the industrial sector, with 42 of the 94 companies having already published, sales were 0.3% lower than expected, while in telecommunications the percentage is 0.25%.
The slowdown in sales growth for industrial companies is particularly striking, as this is a sector that anticipates economic activity and may now reflect the fact that growth in the world’s largest economy will struggle to recover in the coming months. We must not forget that, in a year in which the American stock market posted good results, certain signs of macroeconomic weakness have appeared in recent months which anticipate a possible slowdown in the country.
The results season will continue with intensity in the coming days, since this week a group of important companies will present their accounts, among which there are index giants like Microsoft or Meta. In all, 42% of the total capitalization of the index is expected to present its third quarter accounts in the coming daysand the market has given a lot of weight in recent months to earnings growth expectations of companies that can benefit most from the development of AI, such as the Magnificent Seven, the large technology companies present in the North American stock market. .
There’s another sign that seems to reflect how investors are now less optimistic than they were before earnings season began. Until last week, a company that surprised analysts’ expectations with its results ended up increasing by 1.7% on average after the presentation. This increase is increasingly weak, and was lowered in the current earnings season to 1.3%.
