Q2 Earnings Season Gets Going

We are almost three weeks away from Alcoa’s (NYSE:AA) earnings release on July 8th, but the 2015 Q2 earnings season will get underway this week with the Adobe (NASDAQ:ADBE) report after the close on Tuesday. All of these early reporters have fiscal quarters ending in May, which we count as part of our 2015 Q2 tally.

In total, we will get results from more than 30 companies this week, including 7 S&P 500 members. As you can see in the chart below, S&P 500 companies for the Q2 reporting cycle don’t really start ramping up for another 4 weeks.

As we have been pointing out repeatedly in this space, estimates have come down quite a bit in the run to the start of this earnings season, with total earnings for the quarter now expected to be down -7.2% from the same period last year, down from expectations of positive +1.1% growth in early January. The chart below plots the evolution of Q2 earnings growth estimates since early January.

The revisions trend is broad based, with estimates for most sectors down from early January. The Energy sector’s travails are fairly well understood, but estimates for other sectors have come down quite a bit as well. The chart below identifies the major sectors that have suffered pronounced negative revisions since early January.

The table below presents the summary picture for Q2 contrasted with what companies actually reported in the 2015 Q1 earnings season.

This pronounced downshift in estimates has prompted some on Wall Street to start claiming that the revisions trend may have a gone a bit too much, meaning that estimates have likely become too low. Hard to find a basis for such a claim in real time, particularly given the global growth woes and still-high US dollar. But we will find soon enough as actual Q2 results start coming in.

Here is a list of the 30 companies reporting this week, including 7 S&P 500 members.

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