In the Weekly Earnings Update found on this blog every week, most of the data is taken from Thomson Reuters, “This Week in Earnings” (TWIE). Greg Harrison seems to be the primary author, and is very responsive to inquiries abut the data.<\/p>\n
John Butters at Factset does some great work as well.<\/p>\n
One area that I think Factset does well, is provide revenue estimates for the coming year by sector, as well as the next year, whereas Thomson only gives the current quarter’s revenue data.<\/p>\n
For example, in this week’s TWIE, dated March 6th, 2015, Thomson is providing revenue data for q4 ’14, which for all practical purposes has concluded with 495 of the 500 SP 500 companies having already reported.<\/p>\n
Factset, in their weekly “Earnings Insight”, also provides q4 ’14 revenue growth data.<\/p>\n
Both data providers are saying that the SP 500 revenue growth for q4 ’14 was 2%. Factset also provides estimate data on full-year 2015 and 2016 revenue by sector: Factset estimates that full-year 2015 revenue for the SP 500 will fall by -0.3%, down from a +2.8% as of Jan 1 ’15. The Energy sector’s revenue growth for full year 2015 is expected to be -26%, down from -10% as of Jan 1 ’15 and is the primary drag on SP 500 revenues (surprising I know).<\/p>\n
For 2016, Factset is expecting a recovery to 5.6% revenue growth in 2016, driven by a rebound in Energy revenue growth of +8.7%.<\/p>\n
Here is a very interesting stat from Factset that might surprise readers, related to individual company earnings growth:<\/p>\n
Top 10 Companies with largest upward percentage change in EPS (This list can or does change week-to-week):\u00a0<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n Anything surprise readers here ? What you should see is that 8 of the 10 companies are Energy or energy-related companies\/utilities. For me personally, DO was the biggest surprise. DO and RIG are thought to be mid-water drillers which is thought to be an energy sub-sector in secular decline. Readers should be careful and know that John Butters and Factset have a new Top 10 every week (much like David Letterman.) What gets my attention is when companies start showing up for several weeks, i.e. that usually indicates earnings momentum.<\/p>\n To be fair, all 10 companies with the largest downward percentage change in EPS are all Energy companies as well, with the exception of First Solar.<\/p>\n\n