Skip to main content

3Q Earnings Scorecard -- which sectors are outperforming and which ones are most optimistic

We're pretty well along into earnings season and this is a good time to take stock of how the numbers are stacking up.

Below is a table that lists each sector shows the results as of Tuesday's earnings reports:

Sector Earnings Beats Y-o-Y Earnings Increases Y-o-Y Revenue Increases Upside Guidance Total Providing Guidance Total Number of Stocks Reporting
Basic Industries 24 26 35 5 13 40
Capital Goods 51 51 51 15 34 59
Consumer Durables 36 34 38 9 28 46
Consumer Non-Durables 26 28 29 6 14 34
Consumer Services 44 47 49 6 35 69
Energy 23 18 22
6 31
Finance 80 70 36 4 9 106
Health Care 25 25 36 8 25 43
Miscellaneous 13 10 11 1 10 15
n/a 1 1 1
1 1
Public Utilities 20 18 20 4 13 26
Technology 95 94 106 19 72 121
Transportation 17 27 25 1 3 27
Grand Total 455 449 459 78 263 618

A cursory glance gives the impression this earnings season has been pretty decent. The next table makes things a lot clearer.

This following table converts the numbers above into percentages:

Sector % Upside Guidance % Earnings Beats % Y-o-Y Earnings Increases % Y-o-Y Revenue Increases
Basic Industries 38% 60% 65% 88%
Capital Goods 44% 86% 86% 86%
Consumer Durables 32% 78% 74% 83%
Consumer Non-Durables 43% 76% 82% 85%
Consumer Services 17% 64% 68% 71%
Energy 0% 74% 58% 71%
Finance 44% 75% 66% 34%
Health Care 32% 58% 58% 84%
Miscellaneous 10% 87% 67% 73%
n/a 0% 100% 100% 100%
Public Utilities 31% 77% 69% 77%
Technology 26% 79% 78% 88%
Transportation 33% 63% 100% 93%
Grand Total 30% 74% 73% 74%

In percentage terms, this earnings season looks quite strong. Looking at the Grand Total line, aggregate numbers are definitely good.

Looking at the individual sectors (and leaving out Miscellaneous and n/a), Capital Goods has had the most earnings beats followed by a group of sectors in the high 70% range including Tech, Consumer Durable, Consumer Non-Durables and Utilities.

Similarly to last quarter, the high percentage of revenue increases shows that the earnings increases are not primarily due to cost cutting.

Another interesting fact is related to Upside Guidance. Where we had Tech providing so much upside guidance last quarter, this quarter the Tech number is merely 26%. Most surprising to me is that one of the highest percentages is in Finance sector. While the banks bellyache about the new Dodd-Frank financial regulation laws, many are predicting better times ahead. Looking further across the Financial line, it jumps out that almost twice as many companies had earnings increases than had revenue increases. I suspect that in many cases this is the result of simply reducing bad loan reserves, not any increase in profitable business.

So looking back on the 3rd quarter, the majority of companies seem fairly healthy. Looking ahead based on forward guidance, things look a little anemic. The optimism of the Financials stands in contrast to the conservative outlook of Tech, for example. Time will tell which sector outperforms next quarter.

Disclosure: none
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Brazil - in a bubble or on a roll?

A couple of years ago, no one recognized the real estate bubble even though it was under everyone's nose. Now, analysts and bloggers are seeing bubbles everywhere they look. One of them, they say is in Brazil whose Bovespa stock market index has doubled in the last 12 months. Does the bubble accusation hold water? I don't think so and here are 7 reasons why Brazil is by no means a bubble economy: Exports have held up over the past year thanks to demand from China for Brazil's soya exports and iron ore. This was helped by the the Brazilian government's drive to improve trade links with Asia and Africa. Export diversification, spurred by a more active trade policy and increased focus on "south-south" trade under current president Lula, helped mitigate the decline in demand from OECD (Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development) countries A "sensible" economic framework has been in place since the 1990's. This has included inflation
4 comments
Read more

Thursday Bounce: Trend Busters, Swing Signals and Trend Leaders for July 9, 2009

This is a quick post to announce that we have published Thursday's Trend Leaders, Swing Signals and Trend Busters at Alert HQ . All are based on daily data. Today we have the following: 72 Swing Signals -- A couple of days ago we had 35 signals, today we have twice as many. Happily, we now have 65 BUY signals, a mere 4 SELL Signals plus 3 Strong BUYs. Whoo-hoo! 56 Trend Leaders , all in strong up-trends according to Aroon, MACD and DMI. There are 18 new stocks that made today's list and 60 that fell off Tuesday's list. 48 Trend Busters of which 5 are BUY signals and 43 are SELL signals The view from Alert HQ -- Talk about mixed signals. If you look at our Swing Signals list you would think the market was in the middle of a big bounce. BUY signals are swamping the SELL signals and we even have a few Strong BUYs. Yes, there's a good sprinkling of tech stocks and tech ETFs but the distribution is pretty broad-based with a good number of different sectors represented, eve
1 comment
Read more

Unlock Stock Market Profits - Key #1

This is the first in an ongoing series of articles where I discuss what I feel are keys to successful investing. It is based on a post that provides a summary of the ten keys that individual investors should use to identify profitable stock trades. ( Click here to read the original post ) There are two basic steps to investing. First, you need to find stocks that seem to have some potential. Then you have to determine whether these stocks are actually good investments. There are many stocks that at first glance look interesting, but further research reveals that there are too many negatives to warrant taking a position. This first post in the series starts at the beginning: getting good investment ideas. Key #1: If something special is happening to a stock, it will be reflected in some kind of unusual activity in the markets. As individual investors, we will never be the first to know; however, unusual activity can be an early sign that allows us to follow the Wall Street professional
4 comments
Read more