Stocks will likely continue to cheer the big monetary stimulus from the European Central Bank (ECB) even as the picture emerging from Q4 earnings season is less than reassuring. Oil has been a big drag on earnings. The Saudi news has brought a modest uptick in oil prices today, but the commodity’s cumulative price thus far has effectively eliminated all earnings growth in the first half of 2015.
Including this morning’s reports from General Electric (GE), McDonald’s (MCD) and others, we now have Q4 results from 89 S&P 500 members that combined account for 25% of the index’s total market capitalization. Total earnings for these companies are up +3.5% on +2.2% higher revenues, with 73% beating EPS estimates and 51.7% coming ahead of top-line expectations. Finance is a big drag on the aggregate results at this stage, but the growth picture is nevertheless weak relative to other recent quarters even after excluding Finance from the numbers.
[Read: Q4 Earnings Inform the Market]
This could change in the coming days as the flood of results arrive next week, but Q4 is tracking below other recent quarters in terms of growth rates and revenue surprises. The one area in which the Q4 earnings season is doing better relative to the last few reporting cycles is with respect to earnings beat ratios – while not many companies are beating revenue estimates, the ratio of companies coming ahead of EPS estimates is tracking levels above the recent past. Another notable aspect of this earnings season is the magnitude of negative revisions for the current and following quarters.
The overwhelmingly negative tone of management guidance in recent quarters has been a big reason for negative estimate revisions for a while now. The falling oil prices have added to the negative guidance trend, causing an above-average level of negative revisions in Q4 and the trend even more pronounced in the current and following quarters. Earnings growth for S&P 500 companies in Q1 has dropped from +10.8% in early October to +1.2% at present while the same for Q2 has dropped from +7.4% to -1.2%. This negative revisions pace will most likely accelerate some more as the reporting cycle ramps up next week.
