More than halfway through the February profit reporting season and analysts are using descriptors such as "so far, so good" and "pleasing", with a renewed emphasis on dividends and more upbeat company outlooks giving investors something to cheer about.
At the start of the busiest week of the earnings season, around half of the 174 top 200 companies due to report profits had done so, and, while there has been the usual litany of winners and losers, "the results have been tilted to the positive", UBS strategist David Cassidy writes.
"It's pleasing to see a more positive earnings picture emerging after August's uninspiring display," JPMorgan analysts led by Jason Steed say.
Credit Suisse analyst Richard Hitchens's appraisal is a little less rosy.
"Organic revenue growth remains hard to come by," he points out. So far, revenues have grown by 3.2 per cent against 4.2 per cent expected pre-reporting season, Hitchens says, blaming the "challenging economic environment". That has meant cutting costs has once again been a favourite play among reporting companies.
Crucially, though, board and management teams are painting a rosier picture of the future, even outside the booming materials sector, Cassidy says.
"A clear trend has been upbeat or positive guidance for many companies," he says. He calculates that consensus analyst forecasts for the full June 2017 financial year have been lifted by 1 per cent.
Cassidy believes there have been nine clear positive surprises ahead of this week's reports, including AGL Energy, Amcor, Boral, CIMIC Group, Computershare, Downer EDI, JB Hi-Fi, Resmed and Transurban. His seven "noteworthy" disappointments are Bendigo & Adelaide Bank, Domino's Pizza Enterprises, Henderson Group, IOOF Holdings, James Hardie Industries, REA Group and Tabcorp Holdings.
Best and worst ASX 100 earnings per share revisions and share price reactions following results ahead of this week. Source: UBS
One trend that hasn't changed is that companies remain committed to showering shareholders in dividends. Rio Tinto, AGL Energy, GPT Group and Transurban are among the stocks to have handed out a better than expected payment, on UBS numbers. And they are being well rewarded for doing so, Hitchens says.
"Notably, reactions to dividend surprises have been fairly random on the day of the result, but have then become more positively correlated over the next week following the results," Hitchens says. This, he says "indicates some investor attraction to improved yield" and reflects what he believes is a renewed interest with dividends in a post-Trump world, particularly as the yield from Australian stocks retains a wide margin over rising global bond yields.
Tracking companies 'Beat/Miss' against on-day share price reaction (vs ASX200). Source: JP Morgan
Unsurprisingly, miners are the standout performers thanks to last year's incredible commodity price really that has extended into 2017. Even with high expectations, 70 per cent of material sector names have come in ahead of expectations, JPMorgan calculates. Heavyweight BHP Billiton is due to report on Tuesday evening.
Healthcare, which fell heavily out of favour in 2016 as investors rotated towards more cyclical corners of the sharemarket, has also put in a solid performance, underpinned by CSL and Cochlear.
The expected growth in overall earnings among ASX 200 companies has accelerated to near 20 per cent for this financial year, against 9 per cent in FY2016, on UBS numbers. Once again, this is mostly down to the resources sector.
While the pick-up in profits outside resources is "much more modest", it is "improving nonetheless", UBS's Cassidy says.
Disappointing earnings updates from big names such as Telstra, Origin and, most recently, Brambles have skewed the aggregate earnings "surprise" numbers lower, JPMorgan strategist Jason Steed notes.
The average share price performance on the day of the release has also been dragged lower by some sharp sell-offs, including Domino's Pizza, IOOF, Bendigo & Adelaide Bank, Tabcorp, Primary Healthcare and the aforementioned Telstra and Brambles.
The results from the two big banks "provide confirmation that while conditions are not great, banks are pushing hard on cost control and repricing, while at the same time the drag from the credit cycle is more benign", write Macquarie strategists.
They are upbeat on all the major lenders, but draw a sharp distinction with the underlying conditions for regional lenders such as Bendigo & Adelaide Bank and MyState. Profit reports from those businesses suggested net interest margins – a crucial profitability ratio for lenders – are being squeezed.
UBS's Cassidy reckons overall the bank results "were mixed", and contrasts CBA as a "positive" against "underwhelming" reports from NAB and Bendigo. That said, for Cassidy, "low bad debt charges were a feature of all the banks".
One theme that the UBS and Macquarie teams agree on is, in the former's words, "the improving trend in contractor conditions" for the likes of CIMIC and Downer EDI. Both companies' reports came in "well ahead of expectations", the Macquarie team writes.
In the case of CIMIC the upbeat outlook "reflects broad improvement with the long-awaited ramp-up of major infrastructure projects and improved contract mining revenue", while Downer EDI was "the beneficiary of an increasingly diversified earnings base". The Macquarie team sees more upside ahead for the two stocks, and recommends buying them as well as Lend Lease, for similar reasons.
As Cassidy says, earnings season so far is, outside the mining sector at least, "no profit bonanza", but the updates have provided "better earnings foundations" for the year ahead. A broadly positive reporting season helped the benchmark S&P/ASX 200 index briefly punch through the 5800-point mark last week, bringing the month's gains to around 3 per cent. But as world stock indices hit record highs, many investors and analysts here and abroad are fretting markets may have run too hard.
"We consider the improving profit trend is a supportive fundamental underpinning for the market with resource sector earnings (for now) in a powerful upswing and upgrade cycle," Cassidy writes. That said: "Valuations suggest little margin for error and a moderate correction driven by a global or US correction would not surprise."
