Politics aside, earnings estimates are still improving

While the headlines and market reactions are dominated by the US election results right now, it is worth keeping in mind the news on corporate earnings trends. More than 75% of companies have now reported Q3 earnings, and the results have been extremely strong relative to expectations. The results have not, however, been immediately greeted with positive price responses. Market action being attributed to the election may also be influenced by a lagged response to earnings reports.

According to Factset, within the broad S&P 1500 index universe (large, mid, and small-caps), 84% of companies have reported positive surprises (earnings ahead of consensus estimates) for Q3 so far, and the average “beat” has been quite large in percentage terms. Whereas the consensus forecasts expected S&P 1500 earnings to be down about -25% from a year prior in Q3 when the quarter started (July 1st), the actual results look like they will be around -8%: still down, but far less than expected.

However, Factset’s calculations indicate that only 48% of stocks had a positive stock price impact immediately after their report. Worries about the election and the prospects for further fiscal stimulus in recent weeks may have dampened investor responses to what would otherwise be favorable corporate earnings news. With some of the political uncertainty in the process of being resolved now, investors may now be willing to reward positive earnings news.

So how are analysts responding to the corporate news flow with regard to their forward earnings estimates for the next 12 months?

Our data show that analysts continue to show significantly more estimate increases than decreases in the US, and increasingly that is true for the lagging developed ex-US (EAFE) universe.

The charts below show our indicators of analyst estimate revisions activity in the US and EAFE markets (Europe, Australasia and Far East, i.e., developed ex-North America markets). The red line is the average net proportion of analysts raising versus lowering earnings estimates (right scale), and the blue bars indicate the average percentage change in next-12-month (NTM) estimates over the last month (left scale).

United States_AbsERS_5Nov2020

EAFE Markets_AbsERS_5Nov2020

We see that the US estimate revisions indicators shifted dramatically from severely negative in the spring amid the initial COVID-19 lockdowns to positive over the summer (starting after Q2 earnings reports) and have recently accelerated further to their highest readings in many years. This reflects the impact of the massive stimulus programs started in April and continued through the summer, but which are now fading. It also reflects the heavily conservative estimates that analysts made amid the extreme uncertainty around the impact of COVID-19 and the lack of corporate earnings guidance: with much less information to go on and plenty of unprecedented events, they took a very cautious view on their earnings estimates. Thanks to stimulus and other measures (forbearance on debt repayments, evictions, etc.), earnings have been better than those pessimistic estimates.

A similar pattern has played out, to a somewhat lesser extent, outside the US, where growth was already somewhat weaker than in the US and stimulus efforts were more mixed. This is partly due to the issues in Europe where coordinated fiscal policy is more difficult to do, and the fact that interest rates were already zero or negative in most of the region and thus couldn’t be lowered much more. The same is true to some degree in Japan. And while the US election will be resolved one way or another in the coming days and weeks, the impact of Brexit on the UK and Europe remains an ongoing risk factor.

The recent trend in analyst estimate activity thus remains favorable, but faces risks from the current upswing in COVID-19 cases in the US and Europe as well as the timing and scope of any further fiscal support for economies. Thus choppy market action with an upward drift continues to look most likely, with significant rotation under the surface of the major indices.

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