The flow of US March quarter earnings reports will start to pick up this week with more banks reporting, a couple of airlines and Netflix, the streaming video giant.
The Wall Street consensus expectation is for a 2% decline in earnings a share on a year ago as last year’s tax cut drops out and reflecting slower economic growth.
Citigroup Bank of America, Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, US Bancorp and Bank of New York Mellon, report with big global investment managers Blackrock and later in the week Blackstone.
IBM, Alcoa, Abbott Labs, United Continental, Amex, Honeywell, CSX, Schlumberger, Textron, Pepsi Co, Johnson and Johnson.
Solid results from JPMorgan (actually a record quarterly result) and Wells Fargo (better than expected) saw analysts recast their estimates for the major banks reporting this week – Citigroup, Bank of America Goldman Sacks, Bank of New York, US Bancorp and Morgan Stanley, as well as Amex.
The AMP’s Chief Economist, Dr. Shane Oliver wrote in a weekend note that “given the sharp downgrade to expectations seen in recent months there is a good chance we will see greater than normal earnings beats suggesting that actual earnings growth will come in around flat or up slightly.”
“Either way it’s likely that the March quarter will be the low point for earnings growth this year,” he wrote.
