Average Grade For Q3 Earnings Season

 | Nov 02, 2014 01:25AM ET

We still have plenty of Q3 earnings reports to come, but the bulk of the earnings season is now behind us, with results from 363 S&P 500 companies already out as of Friday, October 31st. The Retail sector is the only one where more than half of the sector’s companies have yet to report Q3 results. For the remaining sectors, the reporting season has ended for 2 – Autos and Aerospace – whole 4 other sectors have Q3 results for 90% or more of their total market caps.

More than a 1000 companies will be reporting results this week, including 87 S&P 500 members. By the end of this week, we will have Q3 earnings reports from 450 S&P 500 companies, with the Retail sector as the only one that will have any sizable number of reports still awaited at that stage.

We grade this earnings season as about ‘average’ – it isn’t good, but it isn’t bad either. To explain our ‘average’ grade, we share two types of charts below that will show how the results thus far compare with the past and what’s happening to estimates for the current period (2014 Q4).

The two side-by-side charts below compare the results thus far what we had seen from the same group of S&P 500 members in Q2 and other preceding quarters (the 4-Quarter Average is the four quarters through 2014 Q2). The left hand side chart shows the growth rate for earnings (orange) and revenues (green) and the right side chart shows the beat ratios. The data in these charts is for the 363 S&P 500 companies that have reported Q3 as of Friday, October 31st.