Updating Our Table for EPS Expectations, Panic Points and Reporting Dates
Here's what we're anticipating as investors sentiment knocks on "extreme greed."
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Revised 2024 and 2025 Calendar EPS Expectations
Over the last few weeks, there have been a variety of data points, some economic, some monthly revenue reports and others, that have cropped up. Let’s also not forget the impact of Hurricanes Helene and Milton, which will slow construction and other activity in the Southeastern U.S.
We are seeing that impact in calendar 2024 EPS expectations for Builders FirstSource BLDR and Vulcan Materials VMC. For BLDR, the new consensus 2024 EPS forecast is $11.37, down from $11.42. The expected 2024 EPS for Vulcan has also been reduced by $0.05 per share to $7.50. No changes were made to 2025 EPS, which reflects the thinking we shared with you earlier today.
Following last week’s quarterly results from Bank of America BAC, the company’s expected EPS for this year was lifted to $3.26 from $3.21. The market now pegs its 2025 EPS at $3.64, up a few pennies from the prior forecast.
We saw bigger revisions for Morgan Stanley MS as the consensus EPS for this year was upsized to $7.26 from $7.00 before its September quarter results last week. The continued rebound in investment banking and continued growth in wealth/asset management led Wall Street analysts to boost the 2025 consensus EPS to $7.82 from $7.67. More support for our recent price target increase is our thinking.
One of the biggest EPS revisions over the last few days was for Meta Platforms META, not for this year but for next year. While the consensus forecast was bumped up $0.05 per share to $21.36 for 2024, the 2025 EPS consensus for Meta is now at $24.43 compared to $24.29 last week and $23.09 a few months ago. In late September, we boosted our META price target to $630 from $575.
Coming off Taiwan Semi’s TSM September quarter results and raised guidance for the current quarter, we would have been surprised if we didn’t see a few ripple effects, but what we saw was somewhat underwhelming. No EPS changes for Marvell MRVL, and only Nvidia’s NVDA calendar 2025 EPS was lifted by a nickel to $4.06. Analysts may be keeping their figures conservative to support lofty price targets or to set them up to raise them further when Nvidia reports in the coming weeks.
Following Taiwan Semi’s capital spending comments, the consensus 2024 EPS for Applied Materials AMAT rose to $8.74 from $8.65. No changes to next year just yet, but if Taiwan Semi continues to post monthly revenue gains like it has the last several months, that is likely to change.
As we make those changes, we’ve also noticed another step down in consensus EPS expectations for the S&P 500 to $239.46 this year and $275.47 for 2025. The revision for 2024 comes entirely in 2H 2024 with the rate of EPS growth compared to 1H 2024 now at 5.3%, far lower than the 11.2% projected in July.
Portfolio Panic Point Adjustments
Last week, we made a number of panic point increases, and we are making a few more this week. Because we are wading deeper into the September quarter earnings with a stretched market valuation and investor sentiment knocking on the door of “Extreme Greed,” we are keeping our panic points a little wider than usual given the potential for outsized reaction to customer, competitor or supplier earnings and the risk of a market pullback.
We are inching our panic point for Dutch Bros BROS shares to $27 from $26
The corresponding panic point for Marvell is hoisted to $64 from $59 following the gains we’ve seen in the shares.
Following our price target increase and boosted EPS expectations for Morgan Stanley, we’re resetting our panic point to $95 from $90
Portfolio September Quarter Earnings Schedule
Below is a mixture of announced and tentative reporting dates for the Portfolio’s holdings. As we move deeper into the September quarter earnings season, we’ll be updating this list as needed:
October 22: Lockheed Martin LMT
October 23: United Rentals URI
October 24: Labcorp LH
October 28: Waste Management WM
October 29: Alphabet GOOGL
October 30: Vulcan Materials VMC, Meta Platforms META, Microsoft MSFT, Universal Display OLED
October 31: Eaton ETN, Mastercard MA, Amazon AMZN, Apple AAPL
November 5: Builders FirstSource BLDR
November 6: Dutch Bros BROS, Qualcomm QCOM
November 7: Axon AXON, Trade Desk TTD
November 14: Applied Materials AMAT
At the time of publication, TheStreet Pro Portfolio was long BLDR, VMC, BAC, MS, META, MRVL, NVDA, AMAT, BROS, LMT, URI, LH, WM, GOOGL, MSFT, OLED, ETN, AMZN, AAPL, QCOM, AXON and TTD.
