The earnings season continues at full speed this week with another 175 companies out of the 2,500 companies we track during the earnings season reporting Q4 earnings. The list below shows the 30 most important earnings to watch this week with the most important day being tomorrow when the digital and e-commerce complex consisting of UPS, Amazon, Alphabet (Google), and Alibaba reports earnings.
Monday:Thermo Fisher Scientific
Tuesday:UPS, Exxon Mobil, Amazon, Alphabet, Amgen, Alibaba, Pfizer
Wednesday: Ping An Insurance, Novo Nordisk, Siemens, Sony, GlaxoSmithKline, PayPal, Qualcomm, AbbVie
Thursday: Unilever, Royal Dutch Shell, Chugai Pharmaceutical, Philip Morris, T-Mobile US, Roche, Merck & Co, Bristol-Myers Squibb
Friday: NTT, Linde, Sanofi, Estee Lauder, Deutsche Telekom
The positive earnings surprise ratio has come down during last week’s earnings from 91% to 82% which is still very high. The aggregate growth rate on revenue and earnings from the 185 companies in the S&P 500 that have reported earnings are -0.2% and 3.1% y/y respectively highlighting that companies are driving earnings growth through cost efficiencies. As the chart below shows, quarterly earnings per share is down only 1% y/y in the MSCI World Index which means that corporate profitability has recovered. This recovering will likely lead to increased investments and risk taking by corporate throughout the year as more stimulus will create a strong growth outlook driven by strong demand from pent-up demand and excess savings in the private sector that will be unleashed when the Covid-19 vaccines are rolled out in every major economy.