Australian June half earnings reports will start to trickle through this week. So far there has been a smattering from investment companies such as Milton Corp, Australian Foundation, Mirrabooka, Euroz and a few updates – Kogan.com comes to mind as a flop.
On Friday GUD because the first real industrial to reveal its figures – earnings up 20% and dividend up sharply by around 15%.
This week Rio Tinto, fund manager, Janus Henderson, and Genworth Australia (a mortgage insurer) report on Wednesday and Resmed (a sleep products group) on Friday.
Telstra, which releases its final figures next month is expected to reveal a big management shuffle today.
The AMP’s chief economist, Dr Shane Oliver said in his weekly note at the weekend “We are expecting 2017-18 earnings growth to come in around 7%, with resources earnings rising around 20% (albeit down from 130% in 2016-17) thanks to solid commodity prices and rising volumes and the rest of the market seeing profit growth of around 4.5%.”
"Strong results are expected for insurers, health care, gaming, building materials and utilities offsetting softness for telcos, banks and consumer stocks.
“Dividend growth is likely to remain solid,” Dr Oliver wrote.
In the US the second heaviest week of the June earnings season after last week when 34% of stocks on the S&P 500 reported.
Apple headlines with its latest quarterly Wednesday morning, our time. That will be of interest to its largest single shareholder in Berkshire Hathaway. Warren Buffett’s company reports its second quarter results on Friday night, our time.
Other US companies reporting include Caterpillar, Pfizer, insurer, AIG, Kraft/Heinz, Procter and Gamble, Ralph Lauren, Archer Daniels Midland, Bunge, Square Inc, Tesla, Sprint, CBS, DowDupont, Loews Corp and Hanesbrands.
The results from CBS and Hanesbrands will be watched closely to see if anything is said about their Australian businesses – the Ten Network in the case of CBS (and sexual harrassment allegations against chairman and cEO, Les Moonves) and the Bonds and Berlei clothing operations and underwear lines in the case of Hanesbrands.
US financial data group, FactSet said at the weekend that so far, 53% of the companies in the S&P 500 have reported actual results for the June quarter.
“In terms of earnings, more companies are reporting actual EPS above estimates (83%) compared to the five-year average.
“If 83% is the final number, it will mark the highest percentage of S&P 500 companies reporting a positive EPS surprise for a quarter since FactSet began tracking this metric in Q3 2008,” FactSet said.
In Europe more than 70 companies in the Stoxx 600 index, led by the zone’s banks, which have underperformed the broader index with a 10% fall so far this year, according to Reuters.
The big banks on the list include BNP Paribas, Intesa Sanpaolo, Lloyds, Standard Chartered, ING, Barclays, SocGen, RBS, Credit Agricole and Unicredit.
Outside banks, BP, supermaket chain, Asda Stores, defence group, BAE and gambling group, William Hill will be among the UK groups expected to report.
