Top S&P 500 Companies to Watch as Earnings Season Starts

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Earnings Season’s Stocks to watch: American banks, Netflix, PayPal

Last week, investors received the Q2 results from a number of big American corporations like Pepsi, Delta, and Fastenal. These numbers caused the respective stocks to soar.

PepsiCo stock soared as the company returned to growth, boosted by the snacking segment. Delta’s stock rose after the company reported better-than-expected results.

This week, the so-called earnings season will kick-off as large American banks start reporting. Other large corporations will be join furtherly.

→ How to Make Profitable Trades as the Earnings Season Kicks Off

Monday

On monday, the biggest companies expected to release their earnings are Charles Schwab, JB Hunt, Citigroup, an First Horizon National. Charles Schwab, the discount broker is expected to deliver an EPS of $0.64. Citigroup is expected to release an EPS of $1.81, while JB Hunt is expected to deliver an EPS of $1.35.

This year, Schwab’s stock has declined by 2% while that of Citi, JB Hunt and First Horizon National have risen by 36%, 2.2%, and 12% respectively.

Tuesday

On Tuesday, companies like Blackrock, CSX, Del Taco, Goldman Sachs, Interactive Brokers, Johnson & Johnson, JP Morgan, Morgan Stanley, Netflix, United Health, and Wells Fargo will release.

While each of these companies is important for the market, investors will focus on the big banks like Goldman Sachs, Wells Fargo, and Morgan Stanley because their activity is usually used as a measure of the performance of the economy. For investment banks, other than the headline figures, investor will look at the growth of the Fixed Income Commodities and Currencies (FICC) segment that has been seeing some weakness in the past few quarters.

For Netflix, they will focus on the subscriber growth. In the past earnings report, the company’s data showed that subscribers hit almost 150 million. The company also warned that it might not continue with this growth. This comes at a time when other companies like Disney, Apple, and AT&T are launching their streaming platforms.

The chart below shows the performance of the key companies that will release on Tuesday.

Wednesday

On Wednesday, the top companies that will release their earnings are Abbot Laboratories, Bank of America, Comerica, Crown Holdings, Kinder Morgan, Northern Trust, PNC Financials, Steel Dynamics, United Rentals, and US Bancorp.

Of all these, investors will pay closer attention to Bank of America, which is one of the biggest banks in the US. Investors expect the bank to generate an EPS of 70 cents. The chart below shows the YTD performance of the key companies that will release their earnings on Wednesday.

Thursday

On Thursday, the top S&P 500 companies that will release their earnings are Alliance Data Systems, American Express, Bank of New York Mellon, BB&T, Danaher, Dover, Genuine Parts, Invesco, Nucor, PayPal, Philip Morris, Microsoft, Signature Bank, Travelers, and WABCO.

Of these, focus will be mostly on PayPal, which has become one of the biggest fintech companies in the world. The company has a market value of more than $141 billion.

Philip Morris will also be on the spotlight following the recent ban of vaping in California. This happened a few months after the company acquired vaping startup, Juul. The chart below shows the YTD performance of the top companies reporting on Thursday.

Friday

On Friday, investors expect earnings from companies like eBay, Honeywell, E*Trade, VF Corp, State Street and Synchrony Financial. More focus will be on eBay, which has come under activist investor attack that call for it to separate its marketplace business with that of its ticketing business.

Activists argue that doing this separation would create more value to investors in a similar way to that of its PayPal separation. The chart below shows the YTD performance of the top companies expected to report on Friday.