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U.S. companies topping analysts’ estimates

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American companies are beating Wall Street profit estimates for the 11th straight quarter, enough to revive a bull market that analysts say will eclipse any rally in the past 12 years, Bloomberg reported.

A total of 220 out of 295 Standard & Poor’s 500 index companies that have reported results since Oct. 11 have exceeded forecasts for the third quarter, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.

Companies from Google Inc. to Peabody Energy Corp. are delivering higher earnings at a time when Bill Gross, the co-chief investment officer of Pacific Investment Management Co., is warning that Europe’s debt crisis will spur a recession. Though more than $6.3 trillion has been erased from global equities since May, analyst forecasts imply that the benchmark measure will post its biggest rally since the 1990s technology bubble, when the gain since March 2009 is included, Bloomberg said.

“This is looking like it’s going to be a really decent quarter,” said Warren Koontz, head of U.S. large-cap value stocks at Loomis Sayles & Co. in Boston. “Valuations are very, very low relative to history, and you don’t have to make heroic assumptions on multiples to get reasonable returns.”

The S&P 500 traded at 11.7 times reported income on Oct. 3, within 14 percent of its price-earnings ratio at the bottom of the financial crisis in March 2009, Bloomberg data show. The index has climbed 14 percent in October, more than any other month since 1974. It gained 3.8 percent last week to 1,285.09.