Q3 Earnings Were Pretty Darn Good

All summer we were being told that the economy was about to head into a Double Dip. Now the numbers are in for the third-quarter earnings season, and the earnings were quite good.

The median EPS surprise was 5%.

For the S&P 500, there were 359 positive surprises and just 95 disappointments.

There was positive year-over-year growth for 379 stocks, and it fell for 117 stocks.

56.6% of all firms did better than expected on their top line. Revenue growth was healthy at 8.12%.

Net margins were 9.01%, the same as Q2 but way above the 7.78% from one year ago.

Excluding financials, net margins rose to 8.05% from 7.90% for Q2 and from 6.99% a year ago.

Full-year total earnings for the S&P 500 are expected to jump 43.1% in 2010 and 11.4% further in 2011.

Revenues for the S&P 500 are expected to rise 4.93% in 2010 and 5.78% in 2011.

The revisions ratio for the full S&P 500 is at 1.75 for 2010 and at 1.48 for 2011, both bullish readings.

Posted by on December 21st, 2010 at 11:26 am


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