Early in earnings season, companies are beating but their stocks are missing, JPMorgan says
It’s early in the second quarter earnings reporting season but, so far, the majority of both U.S. and European companies are beating analyst estimates but the performance of their stocks is lagging, according to JPMorgan.
“Out of early reports, with 70 S&P 500 results and 90 in Europe, the majority are beating the consensus projections,” Mislav Matejka, head of global and European equity strategy at JP Morgan, said in a note to clients early Monday. “The sample set is relatively small, but the stock price reaction to the beats is worse than typical.”
Moreover, JPMorgan looked at companies issuing profit warnings ahead of second quarter earnings, and stocks within that group are down 10% or more, the exception being some energy and chemical stocks, probably because of their poor first half performance entering July.
Bottom line, JPMorgan doesn’t expect second quarter earnings to give the market much of a boost compared with the first quarter, for a couple of reasons. “Stock price reactions in general could be more muted this time, or at least any positive momentum might not have legs,” Matejka wrote. “Ahead of Q1, sentiment and positioning were cautious, but the equity market was strong coming into Q2 reporting season, suggesting buyside expectations are more elevated, even as analyst projections are subdued. Also, the question is whether the guidances will be raised on the back of quarterly beats, as there was some loss of momentum as we moved through the quarter, and China dataflow continues to disappoint.”
— Scott Schnipper, Michael Bloom
Stock futures open flat Monday
U.S. stock futures opened little-changed Monday.
Futures tied to the Dow Jones Industrial Average shed just 5 points, or 0.01%. Meanwhile, S&P 500 futures and Nasdaq 100 futures ticked up 0.02% and 0.03%, respectively.
— Hakyung Kim