对2023年第二季度公司盈利的看法

William Blair The second-quarter earnings season is now underway,with 77 S&P 500 companies having reported. Of thesecompanies, 79.2% have surprised to the upside, 15.6% tothe downside, and 5.2% have been in line. This is a littleabove the average surprise factor of 74% (or 75.7% for thesecond quarter) since 2013.In thisEconomics Weekly,webreak down the past quarter’s earnings and previewthe main factors that we will be looking for from amacro perspective. It’s Confession Time According to the latest I/B/E/S Refinitiv collection ofanalysts’ estimates, earnings are expected to have de-clined 11.5% in the second quarter compared to a yearago. This would be the third consecutive quarterly declineand the largest quarterly decline since the second quar-ter of 2002. Hence, by this measure it would suggest thatthe economy has already been experiencing an earningsrecession (exhibit 1). The exhibits also show that as “the confession” seasongets underway, these beaten-down estimates start tomove up significantly as companies’ actual earnings“beat” guidance. From the mid-July trough in expectations,earnings have historically increased by 5.1% to the end thereporting period, ending up only 0.6% lower than start-of-year estimates. Analysts are expecting this to be the trough in earnings,with third-quarter earnings expected to be 9.1% higherthan the second. First-quarter earnings estimates followed the same pat-tern, but were significantly worse than the historical aver-age (exhibit 4). A look at today’s earnings estimates relative to the typicalpattern shows that analysts have been slightly more con-servative over the course of this second quarter comparedto the average trend in second-quarter estimates over thelast 22 years. As exhibits 2 and 3 show, while second-quarter estimatesfrom the start of the year typically fall by 5.4% to troughin the second week of July, today’s have fallen by 6.2%. Wenote that the average is being heavily skewed by the col-lapse in earnings in 2009 and 2020, whereas a look at themedian decline shows a fall of 3.3%. William Blair Scratching a little below the surface, exhibit 5 shows that 6of 11 sectors are expected to report year-over-year growth,while 5 sectors are anticipated to fall. Furthermore, while many of these larger banks have beenprofiting from the increase in their depositor base, thesmaller banks have suffered. This pain is likely to be ondisplay in the form of squeezed net interest margins. JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon also warned that having to payhigher deposit rates would increasingly impact his bankand other large banks going forward. The most significant earnings increase is from consumerdiscretionary stocks, which are expected to have increased28.5% annually (though this is much lower than the 36.7%rise expected at the start of the year). More broadly, we are keen to hear from companies aboutthe impact that we have already seen in weaker commer-cial and industrial loans, as well as real estate and consum-er loans. Judging from the comments we have been hearingfrom many of the manufacturing companies (for example,in the various manufacturing surveys and the Beige Book),the interest rate situation is starting to restrain growth.This has been the result of both actual financing conditionsand the uncertainty around the expected impact goingforward, which is creating more caution. The biggest area of weakness is from the energy compa-nies, where the fall in the price of energy over the pastquarter due to slowing global growth has come as a majorsurprise to the market. In terms of sectors where growth expectations have faredthe worst relative to estimates at the start of the year, thetwo worst performers have been healthcare, where growthestimates have fallen from -6.9% to -28.8%, and energy,down from -29.1% to -46.9%. In fact, only two sectors haveincreased their estimates from the start of the year: com-munication services (8.9% vs. 6.0%) and industrials (7.4%vs. 6.5%). Similarly, we also will be keeping a sharp ear out for anycomments related to weakness in the commercial real es-tate space, either from the banks or companies themselves,as greater stress is likely here in the coming quarters. What to Look for This Season We also already know that many companies have been liq-uidating their inventories, and with prices coming down—particularly for raw commodities—some of the profitsyielded in previous quarters from inflated inventory profitswill now be given back. From a macro perspective, we will keep an eye on three im-portant areas.Perhaps the most important factor we willmonitor will be the impact from higher interest ratesand the general economic outlook companies provide. The second important factor will be the extent towhich companies still feel they can pass through priceincreases. First out of the gate here were last week’s earnings fromthe largest banks, which were surprisingly upbeat. Thereseemed to be little immediate adverse impact from theSilico