Say goodbye to a pretty good earnings season
Nvidia’s report yesterday marked an informal end to the quarterly pageant of corporate profits.
That’s a wrap, everybody.
Nvidia’s quarterly report Wednesday marked the informal end to nearly seven weeks of SEC-approved earnings excitement.
Long story short: the numbers were good.
Earnings per share at S&P 500 companies rose 12.7% compared to the same quarter last year. That was the seventh straight quarter of positive annual growth and much stronger than the 6.5% forecast Wall Street analysts had penciled in before the numbers started to roll in with JPMorgan’s report on April 11.
Of the 11 sectors that compose the S&P 500, communications services was the biggest contributor to earnings growth, thanks largely to strong numbers from Meta and Alphabet.
Energy was the biggest drag, as it was last quarter, as a decline in crude oil prices weighed on profits for giants like Exxon and Chevron.
Of course, grouches may point out that the markets are always forward-looking and Q1 results tell us nothing about the potential effects of President Trump’s trade war on Corporate America over the coming year.
True enough. A fair number of companies yanked guidance for the coming year in the face of such uncertainty. But overall, the signals CEOs sent over the past few weeks haven’t been taken by Wall Street analysts as particularly dire.
Forecasts for earnings wobbled a bit since the start of earnings, but consensus EPS expectations are basically back to where they were before the 10-Qs started flying.
Where does that leave us? Well, essentially in the fundamental human condition: mired in uncertainty about what will happen in the future.
But luckily for us, Q2 earnings are only about six weeks away!
