{"id":6255,"date":"2016-09-03T17:08:18","date_gmt":"2016-09-03T17:08:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/fundamentalis.com\/?p=6255"},"modified":"2016-09-03T17:08:18","modified_gmt":"2016-09-03T17:08:18","slug":"sp-500-weekly-earnings-update-positive-revisions-improved-in-q2-16-lapping-easier-earnings-comps-in-q4-16-q1-17","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/fundamentalis.com\/?p=6255","title":{"rendered":"SP 500 Weekly Earnings Update: Positive Revisions Improved in Q2 &#8217;16, Lapping Easier Earnings Comp&#8217;s in Q4 &#8217;16, Q1 &#8217;17"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Basically, the entire SP 500 has reported their Q2 &#8217;16 earnings, with 497 of the 500 SP 500 components now reported.<\/p>\n<p>Revisions have been fairly positive, as detailed by this spreadsheet:\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/fundamentalis.com\/?attachment_id=6256\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-6256\">FC-eps estimate revisions<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>John Butters over at Factset confirms the Thomson Reuters numbers from a different perspective: In Factset&#8217;s <em><strong>Earnings Insight<\/strong><\/em> published 9\/2\/2016, John notes that &#8220;the Q3 &#8217;16 bottom-up estimate for the SP 500 dropped by 2.5%&#8221; during the 2nd quarter earnings reporting period.&#8221;<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>The 4-quarter average is a 3.9% decline<\/li>\n<li>The 20-quarter average is a 3.4% decline<\/li>\n<li>The 40-quarter average is a 3.8% decline.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>The point regarding the Factset data is that downward pressure on the SP 500 Q3 &#8217;16 earnings is becoming less severe, even as crude oil still struggles.<\/p>\n<p>Expect the same for Q4 &#8217;16 and Q1 &#8217;17.<\/p>\n<p>There is no question the SP 500 year-over-year growth rate in earnings remains subdued in the low single digits, (Per Factset, Ex-Energy, the revenue growth is 2.6% and the SP 500 earnings growth rate for Q2 &#8217;16 was +0.8%.)\u00a0When i posted the Factset &#8220;Ex-Energy&#8221; stats a few weeks ago, some readers became irate: I&#8217;m not making a value judgment about Q2 &#8217;16&#8217;s &#8220;Ex-Energy&#8221; earnings growth &#8211; the data is simply stated as is.<\/p>\n<p>If readers would look at the above, attached spreadsheet, they can see that within the SP 500, positive revisions have risen nicely above 50% during the SP 500 earnings reporting period from mid-July to mid-August &#8217;16, which is a sharp improvement from what we saw in Q1 &#8217;16, when the 4th quarter was being reported.<\/p>\n<p>Which brings me to point #2: The SP 500 will be lapping easier earnings compares in Q4 &#8217;16 and Q1 &#8217;17. Remember, it was exactly one year ago, in August &#8217;15 and August &#8217;16 that China devalued the yuan, and the Chinese stock market fell precipitously, and the US stock market reacted accordingly. But it was also in Q4 &#8217;15 and Q1 &#8217;16 that commodities continued to drop sharply and high-yield credit spreads blew out (i.e. widened substantially) that really resulted in the 12% correction in the SP 500 from late November &#8217;15 through mid-February &#8217;16.<\/p>\n<p><em><strong>Conclusion:<\/strong> <\/em>one aspect I&#8217;ve been flatly wrong about is the rate of improvement in the forward 4-quarter estimate this year. My expectation was that by September &#8217;16 the &#8220;forward 4-quarter&#8221; estimate would be at least &#8220;mid-single-digits&#8221; growth. But the fact too is that analyst revisions, which are like tracking big-game hunters, are becoming steadily &#8220;less worse&#8221; and thus portent positively for forward quarters.<\/p>\n<p>In terms of earnings and revenue growth, the SP 500 will be lapping far easier numbers in Q4 &#8217;16 and particularly in Q1 &#8217;17. That portends positively for the rest of the year and into early &#8217;17 for SP 500 earnings and revenue.<\/p>\n<p>Here is the actual quarterly, bottom-up SP 500 earnings data (again, by quarter) for the 5 quarters through Q1 &#8217;17:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Q1 &#8217;17: $26.96<\/li>\n<li>Q4 &#8217;16: $29.52<\/li>\n<li>Q3&#8242; 16: $29.99<\/li>\n<li>Q2 &#8217;16: $30.09<\/li>\n<li>Q1 &#8217;16: $28.60<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Note the sharp drop in the dollar estimate from Q4 &#8217;16 to Q1 &#8217;17.<\/p>\n<p>For the entire year 2017 the estimated SP 500 EPS growth rate is looking quite healthy, but it is still a tad early to make any predictions.<\/p>\n<p><em><strong>Thomson Reuters data (By the Numbers):\u00a0<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><em><strong>Forward 4-quarter estimate:<\/strong><\/em> $125.86 vs $125.88 last week<\/li>\n<li><em><strong>PE ratio:<\/strong><\/em> 17(x)<\/li>\n<li><em><strong>PEG:<\/strong><\/em> 9.26(x)<\/li>\n<li><em><strong>SP 500 earnings yield:<\/strong><\/em> 5.77% &#8211; susually the SP 500 has been a strong buy when a correction has taken the yield over 6%<\/li>\n<li><em><strong>Year-over-year growth rate of forward estimate:<\/strong><\/em> +1.87% vs last week&#8217;s +1.66%. Continues to grow steadily but still well short of where I expected it to be by now in 2016.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Like the old Led Zeppelin &#8220;The Song Remains The Same&#8221; the SP 500 earnings tune is similar to past weeks.<\/p>\n<p>Slow, steady improvement is happening for sure.<\/p>\n<p>Thanks for reading.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Basically, the entire SP 500 has reported their Q2 &#8217;16 earnings, with 497 of the 500 SP 500 components now&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[91],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6255","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-weekly-earnings-update"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"post_mailing_queue_ids":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/fundamentalis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6255","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/fundamentalis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/fundamentalis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fundamentalis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fundamentalis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6255"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/fundamentalis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6255\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6262,"href":"https:\/\/fundamentalis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6255\/revisions\/6262"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/fundamentalis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6255"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fundamentalis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6255"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fundamentalis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6255"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}