Earnings Scoreboard - Earnings season ends with bubbling concerns

 

Horacio Coutino, multi-asset strategist

Renée Friedman, Global Head of Research

“When I look at AI, there you have all these AI adjacent companies, you have these AI players or AI pretenders. That's where you would want to look to short. However, so long as the leaders, such as Nvidia, are still going up and to the right, I think that would be a very dangerous trade.”

— Carson Block, founder of Muddy Waters Research, on Bloomberg’s The Opening Trade, on 20th November, 2025.

Who’s scoring highest and why

During the week of 17th November, 16 S&P 500 companies (including 3 Dow Jones Industrial Average components, Nvidia, Walmart and Home Depot) reported earnings. Despite companies beating estimates, the market reaction was driven by the enhanced volatility of further monetary anticipation, due to the release of the September nonfarm payrolls delayed by the government shutdown.

As of 14th November, 82.6% of the 472 S&P 500 companies that have reported so far beat earnings expectations, while 77.2% surpassed revenue forecasts, continuing a streak that's become almost routine this quarter. According to FactSet, the blended Q3 earnings growth rate stands at 13.4% - higher than last week’s 13.1% and higher than the 8.0% projected at the end of the quarter on 30th September. It would mark the fourth consecutive quarter of double-digit growth, and the ninth consecutive quarter of positive earnings growth for the index. The S&P 500 last saw four straight quarters of double-digit earnings growth throughout 2021, from Q1 to Q4.

The S&P 500 surprise factor is currently at 6.6%, lower than last week’s 7.0%, and lower than the average of 7.3% seen over the past four quarters and below the five-year average of 8.4%. Within sectors, Industrials leads with a 16.0% positive earnings surprise, while Communication Services has fallen short of estimates by 9.5%. Since the end of Q3, Financials has experienced the most significant improvement in earnings growth among all 11 sectors, shifting from a projected increase of 11.6% as of 30th September, to an increase of 23.5% today.

Communication Services is now the most significant detractor to the increase in the index’s earnings growth rate due to negative earnings surprises and downward revisions to earnings estimates. The sector is now projected to have a decrease in earnings of 7.8%, whereas on 30th September, it showed a projected increase of 3.0%.

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