For Immediate Release
Chicago, IL – March 2, 2010 – Zacks Research Equity Strategist Dirk Van Dijk says that S&P 500 earnings are continuing to show red ink. He tracks companies on the Zacks.com web site, naming names, while forecasting trends for the months ahead.
Earnings Double Year Over Year
With 94.4% of the reports in, this has been a very strong earnings season. Yes, we had easy comps from a year ago, but 102.4% year-over-year growth is nothing to sneeze at.
Most of that eye popping growth is due to a handful of firms, mostly in the financials. However, even if the financials are excluded, earnings growth is still 12.5%. The majority of firms are reporting higher earnings than a year ago. Earnings are coming in much better than expected, with 74.2% of all firms reporting coming in with better than expected earnings, only 16.5% disappointing.
While all sectors have seen more positive surprises than disappointments, Tech has put on an absolutely stunning performance. With 98.6% of its results in, there have been 63 positive surprises, and just a single disappointment.
Autos have far fewer firms, but with all of its results in, it has a perfect record, and a stunning 82.15% median surprise. Conglomerates also has a perfect record of 8 and 0. Retail, Discretionary and Business Service are almost perfect as well. Disappointments are concentrated in the Financials, as the sector is responsible for 29.5% of all firms falling short of expectations.
Just because a stock is in a strong sector does not mean that it has a strong revisions profile. For example, Retail is doing extremely well, yet Walgreen’s (WAG) has a very weak revisions profile. Similarly, in Tech, a very strong sector overall, Motorola (MOT) and Monster Worldwide (MWW) look just awful.
On the other hand, the Transportation sector overall looks like it is going off the rails, but inside of it Expeditors International (EXPD) and United Parcel Service (UPS) both have very healthy revisions profiles.
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Contact: Dirk Van Dijk, CFA
Company: Zacks.com
Phone: 312-265-9211
Email: pr@zacks.com
Visit: www.zacks.com
