The Australian June half earnings reports will move into second gear this week with 15 major companies reporting – the most important by far (and for the entire season, perhaps) being the Commonwealth Bank on Wednesday.
In the US media company quarterly reports will dominate (see below) the coming week.
Navitas is due to report later today, (it has already announced big impairments), Shopping Centres Australia, IOOF, Zip Co and Transurban (tomorrow), Tabcorp, AMP (half year, with big impairments) and CBA (Wednesday with big losses, fines and other costs), AGL, Crown, Mirvac, Magellan, 21st Century Fox, Orora and Suncorp (Thursday) and James Hardie (quarterly), Nick Scali, and linked companies REA and News Corp on Friday.
The AMP’s Dr Shane Oliver says the AMP is expecting 2017-18 earnings growth to come in around 9%. Other forecasts are bit more conservative 7at around 7%.
He says resources earnings rising around 25% (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 5%.
Rio Tinto though lifted interim profit 12% on an underlying basis which was a bit short of some market estimates. That helped its shares to close the week down almost 6%.
Strong results are expected for insurers, health care, utilities, gaming and building materials offsetting softness for telcos, banks and consumer discretionary stocks and dividend growth is likely to remain solid, according to Dr Oliver’s forecast
In the US it’s the media, with quarterly figures from marriage partners, Disney and 21st Century Fox (quarterly and financial year). News Corp (quarterly and financial year and with Foxtel now included).
The New York Times also reports mid week, along with Cable One, Univision, Salon Media, Gannett, Tronc, Viacom, Tegna and Meredith, America’s biggest magazine group after buying time Inc.
Of the 80% of S&P 500 companies to have reported so far, 85% have beaten on earnings by an average beat of 5.3% and 73% have beaten on sales. Earnings are up around 26% year on year.
Other companies reporting include Snap, CVS, Viacom, Marriott, Tyson Foods, Etsy, Newell brands, Avis and Crocs.
