Speaker - Mislav Matejka, CFA, Head of Global Equity Strategy

Q1 reporting season again showed an age-old pattern of beats vs heavily lowered expectations. For full year 2024, earnings projections in the US are unchanged ytd, and down a few percent in Europe. The downgrades to sellside analyst EPS expectations throughout the year are nothing unusual, they happen most of the time, without adverse equity market reaction, but we believe that it is important that they do not escalate, as then the market might not be able to look through them. Beneath the surface, there are three interesting trends, one being maintained, and two showing a rotation: 1. All the US earnings growth is still Mag-7 driven. Q1 was the 5th quarter in a row where, if Mag-7 contribution is taken out, the remaining 493 S&P500 constituents have shown outright negative yoy% EPS growth. This has been beneficial to our continued OW on Growth vs Value style, and OW large vs small caps, but the odds could be increasing that we might see some reversal. 2. European earnings are starting to do better vs the US, and that was one of the reasons why we upgraded Eurozone vs the US last quarter. We continue to believe that the region will at least hold its own vs the US, irrespective of the direction of the overall equity market. 3. Cyclical sector earnings are softening vs Defensives. For S&P500, median Cyclical EPS growth is now below Defensives, for the first time since Covid. This is one of the reasons why we argued in early April for a rotation into Defensives, especially into the Utilities and Real Estate sectors. From a top down perspective, we are particularly concerned about the earnings prospects of the Autos sector, rating it as UW.

This podcast was recorded on 19 May 2024.

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