Weekly Update: The “Forward 4-Qtr Estimate” Will Jump To $212 – $213 This Week

 | Oct 03, 2021 12:52AM ET

One of the vagaries of the IBES data by Refinitiv, is that the “This Week in Earnings” and the Earnings Scorecard, while released on Friday, contains data updates as of Thursday, the night prior. This isn’t that big of a deal since, during every earnings season, the vast bulk of each weeks earnings reports occur from Monday night after the close to Thursday night after the close.

As of time of writing, Oct. 1, the “forward 4-quarter estimate” should be Q4 ’21 through Q3 ’22 and if we summed those quarterly bottom-up estimates for the S&P 500, the sum would total $213.17.

The IBES data by Refinitiv report report is still using Q3 ’21 through Q2 ’22, which summed to $206.32. The report also shows Thursday’s close for the S&P 500 of 4,307 and the PE ratio based on that close.

It’s ok: I just adjust for the calendar anomaly.

This coming week, we should see the typical 3% – 5% increase in the forward estimate as the old quarter falls off and a forward quarter is added for estimate inclusion.

Too much detail, sorry.

Here’s a quick summary of the data:

  • Forward 4-quarter estimate (per the data) is $206.32 vs $206.60 from the previous week.
  • The forward 4-quarter estimate (using the Q4 ’21 – Q3 ’22 roll, which will be shown this coming week) is $213.17 vs the week before last week’s $206.60.
  • The PE using Friday market’s close is 20x;
  • Here’s what’s interesting: the S&P 500 earnings yield ended Friday at 4.74% vs last week’s 4.64%. The closer the S&P 500 earnings yield gets to 5%, the more the S&P 500 earnings yield approaches a post-COVID-19 recovery;

Here’s some other data I track using the IBES data by Refinitiv:

h2 Watching quarterly growth rates/h2