San Francisco, Oct 17: The third-quarter earnings season has Wall Street on a high, with 97% of the largest US companies that have reported so far posting earnings that met or beat expectations. Few firms disappointed investors with earnings on Wednesday, a day kicked off by an earnings report from the world’s largest automaker, General Motors, and ended with a quarterly update from the largest technology company, IBM.
Earnings misses have been strikingly rare this quarter. As of Tuesday, only two of the 61 companies in the Standard & Poor’s 500 index of large companies had reported earnings below Wall Street expectations, versus seven in the year-earlier quarter. About 42 of the 65 topped expectations.
This has been reflected in climbing stock prices, with the Dow Jones industrial average of blue chip stocks up 18% this year and nine of its 30 components grazing fresh 52-week highs on Wednesday. Among them were Intel, which on Tuesday afternoon surpassed already raised financial targets. IBM and GM touched year-highs before retreating.
Bureau Report