For the fourth quarter to date, 85 companies in the S&P 500 have issued negative EPS guidance and 26 companies have issued positive EPS guidance. The number of companies issuing negative EPS is above the five-year average (80), while the number of companies issuing positive EPS guidance is below the five-year average (31).
At the sector level, the Consumer Discretionary and Information Technology sectors have the highest number of companies issuing negative EPS guidance for the fourth quarter. This is not surprising, as these two sectors have historically had the highest number of companies providing quarterly EPS guidance on average.
What is surprising, however, is the unusually high number of companies in the Consumer Discretionary sector issuing negative EPS guidance for Q4. While the number of companies issuing negative EPS guidance in the Information Technology sector (22) is slightly below the five-year average (23.5) for the sector, the number of companies issuing negative EPS guidance in the Consumer Discretionary sector (25) is well above the five-year average for the sector (15.9). Please see the chart on page 11 for more details.
If the final number of companies in the Consumer Discretionary sector issuing negative EPS guidance is 25, it will be the highest number for this sector since FactSet began tracking guidance in 2006. The current record high is 22, which occurred in both Q1 2014 and Q2 2014.
In addition, the number of companies in the Consumer Discretionary sector issuing positive EPS guidance is zero. If this is the final number of companies issuing positive EPS guidance in this sector, it will be the lowest number since FactSet began tracking guidance in 2006. The current record low is three, which occurred in Q1 2006.
At the industry level, 13 of the 25 companies that have issued negative EPS guidance are in retail industries: Specialty Retail (eight), Multiline Retail (three), and Internet & Catalog Retail (two).