The busiest week of the earnings season is here and there are 10 companies investors are betting will top Wall Street’s expectations.
CNBC used Estimize, which pools thousands of estimates from real investors and traders, to sort through the many companies reporting over the next week and find the ones where this group had higher expectations than the standard Wall Street consensus estimate from analysts.
About a third of the S&P 500 is expected to have reported quarterly earnings by the end of the week. These companies include tech giants Microsoft, Google-parent Alphabet, Twitter and e-commerce behemoth Amazon. They are also among the companies expected to beat Wall Street earnings forecasts, according to estimates from Estimize.
All of these companies, except for Amazon, has a history of topping Wall Street’s estimates too.
Dow member Microsoft, scheduled to report Thursday after the bell, will report earnings of 78 cents a share, five cents higher than the Street’s consensus estimate, according to Estimize. The tech giant also has a history of topping Street expectations 75 percent of the time, according to Estimize.
KeyBanc Capital Markets analyst Brent Bracelin said he expects Microsoft to post strong quarterly results “led by the continuation of robust Azure and Office 365 adoption trends.”
“The commercial cloud annualized run-rate is on pace to exceed the $20B goal set back in 2015, either this quarter or next, on 45% y/y growth,” Bracelin said in a note Sunday.
Bracelin has an overweight rating and an $82 price target on Microsoft. The stock traded near $79 on Monday and is up about 28 percent this year.
Amazon is also expected to top Wall Street expectations, but one word of caution: The company’s earnings beat estimates just 46 percent of the time, according to Estimize. The e-commerce giant will report earnings per share of 12 cents, while Wall Street expects a loss of 2 cents a share, according to Estimize.
Tom Forte, an analyst at DA Davidson, expects the company to post a strong beat as sales from Amazon Web Services grow.
“Historically, the performance of AWS has often had the most impact on its share price, because it is generating the fastest sales growth of its three operating segments (North America, International, and AWS) and the highest margin of the three,” Forte said in a note to clients Thursday, adding he expects AWS revenue to grow 41.5 percent year over year.
Forte has a buy rating and a $997 price target on the stock. Amazon shares traded near $971 on Monday and are up nearly 30 percent in 2017. Amazon is scheduled to report Thursday after the bell.
Google-parent Alphabet and Twitter will also beat the Street, according to Estimize. Both stocks are up 25.2 percent and 7.6 percent this year respectively. Twitter will report Thursday before the open and Alphabet will report after the close Thursday.
Source: Tech CNBC
Big earnings week: These 10 companies will beat the Street, investors say