During each corporate earnings season, companies often provide guidance on expected earnings for future quarters or for the full year. However, given the uncertainty around tariffs, are companies having difficulty providing an estimate for future earnings? As a result, how many S&P 500 companies have withdrawn EPS guidance for 2025 during the Q1 earnings season? On the other hand, how many S&P 500 companies have provided EPS guidance for 2025 during the Q1 earnings season?
To answer these questions, FactSet searched for comments on annual EPS guidance in the Q1 earnings releases, presentations, and conference call transcripts of the 478 S&P 500 companies that had reported actual results for the first quarter through May 22. Of these 478 companies, 259 (54%) commented on EPS guidance for the current year.
Of these 259 companies, only 8 (3%) stated that they were withdrawing or not updating previous EPS guidance for FY 2025. Six of these eight companies cited “uncertainty” associated directly or indirectly due to tariffs as the reason for withdrawing EPS guidance. A list of these eight companies and their comments can be found in Appendix A on page 36 of the Earnings Insight report linked below.
By comparison, during the Q1 2020 earnings season impacted by the COVID lockdowns, 185 S&P 500 companies withdrew or did not update prior annual EPS guidance.
On the other hand, 251 S&P 500 companies have provided EPS guidance for FY 2025 during the Q1 2025 earnings season. Of these 251 companies, 139 maintained previous annual EPS guidance, 64 provided annual EPS guidance that was higher than the previous guidance issued by the company, 37 provided annual EPS guidance that was lower than the previous guidance issued by the company, 8 initiated new EPS guidance (no prior guidance), and 3 provided multiple EPS guidance ranges.
At the sector level, the Utilities (29) and Industrials (28) sectors have the highest number of companies that maintained previous annual EPS guidance. The Information Technology (17) and Health Care (15) sectors have the highest number of companies that provided annual EPS guidance above previous guidance, while the Consumer Staples (11) and Health Care (9) sectors have the highest number of companies that provided annual EPS guidance below previous guidance.
This analysis only tracked annual EPS guidance (or annual FFO per share guidance for REITs) issued by S&P 500 companies for 2025 or 2026 during the Q1 2025 earnings season. Companies that withdrew or provided annual guidance for other metrics (revenues, EBITDA, capital expenditures, operating margins, etc.) were not included in this analysis.
Given the uncertainty around tariffs, why are so many S&P 500 companies maintaining their previous annual EPS guidance for the year? Companies have offered various reasons for maintaining their prior guidance.
Some companies stated they are being conservative in their outlook given the uncertainty around tariffs.
We are clearly in a period of significant economic and market volatility, principally from uncertainty around tariffs and their impact on US inflation and interest rates. Given the strength in the first quarter and our current run rates in key verticals, we would normally be increasing our 2025 revenue and adjusted EPs guidance. But given the significant uncertainty in the economy and with consumer and corporate confidence, we are maintaining our 2025 guidance at the levels we provided to you in February. -Equifax (Apr. 22)
Heading into Q2, our strong Q1 performance, strong pipelines and strong current activity, would have prompted us to raise our full year guidance to the high end of the range we set in February. However, given the significant market uncertainty related to tariffs, absent increased interest rate volatility or a recession, we are maintaining our 2025 core EPS guidance range of $5.80 to $6.10. -CBRE Group (Apr. 24)
Some companies stated that other factors (such as the weaker U.S. dollar) are offsetting the impact of tariffs.
Moving to 2025 EPS bridge on slide 12. Our adjusted EPS outlook for the year is $4 per share to $4.10 per share. At the midpoint, this includes approximately $0.24 from operational growth, $0.05 of tailwinds from foreign exchange rates and a net $0.05 benefit from lower share count and higher interest. These are partially offset by a negative $0.12 from the incremental 2025 tariffs currently in place. While our overall financial metrics for the year remain generally consistent with our prior outlook, we acknowledge that the economic conditions remain uncertain, including the impact of foreign exchange rates and tariffs. -Otis Worldwide (Apr. 23)
Regarding foreign exchange, given the recent weakening of the US dollar, we now estimate currency will have a neutral impact on sales growth for the year. This compares to our prior outlook of a roughly 150 basis point headwind and will have a positive benefit on our reported sales and earnings per share. For earnings per share, we are maintaining our initial $5.45 to $5.65 earnings per share guidance, including estimated tariff headwinds that will impact us during the second half of 2025. -Solventum Corporation (May 8).
A number of companies also stated they are able mitigate the impact of tariffs.
We're remaining agile in a rapidly changing environment. Bob will provide more detail on our estimated tariff impact and mitigation strategies in a moment. Our initial guidance on February 4 incorporated estimated impacts from tariffs and an expectation that volume would likely decline as prices rose. As a result, while the tariff amounts by country have changed since our last earnings call and some tariffs have been paused, we feel comfortable maintaining our initial 2025 sales and adjusted 2025 EPS guidance with the current tariff impacts. We have taken several steps to mitigate tariffs across our portfolio and continue to position our businesses to be successful in both the short term and the long term. -Pentair (Apr. 22)
More specifically, our businesses have responded quickly and have developed tariff response plans, which include specific mitigation actions to offset the impact from tariffs. These mitigation actions include select pricing initiatives, localization of production operations, adjustments to our supply chain, and targeted productivity actions. We are also finding opportunities created by the tariffs to take advantage of our substantial US manufacturing footprint to broaden our customer base and support their growth in the US. While uncertainty has increased as a result of the global trade dynamics, we believe we can offset tariff headwinds through the implementation of these mitigation actions. As a result, we continue to expect full year sales to be up low single-digits on a percentage basis compared to 2024. We also continue to expect diluted earnings per share to be in the range of $7.02 to $7.18, up 3% to 5% compared to last year's results. We expect the benefits from these various mitigating actions to build throughout the year. We remain confident in our full year outlook and our ability to deliver strong results in 2025. -AMETEK (May 8)
Finally, some companies stated they expected little to no impact from tariffs on their results.
We are maintaining our full year 2025 guidance of organic revenue growth of 10% to 12%, and adjusted earnings per share in the range of $10.10 to $10.30, representing 15% to 17% adjusted EPS growth. The forecast impact from foreign currency exchange remains 1.5% for 2025. This outlook contemplates an environment where tariffs remain at current levels and consumer spending remains stable. The cost impact of tariffs at current levels is expected to be minimal relative to the size of the cost base of the company and thus manageable within our guidance range. -Fiserv (Apr. 24)
Although the effects of tariffs have not been formally reflected in our guidance, we are not expecting a material net impact on our full-year 2025 results given policies in place today. Global grain and oilseed demand is not expected to decline, regardless of any changes in trade flows. As a result, the Company reaffirmed full-year 2025 guidance with net sales expected to be in the range of $17.2 billion to $17.6 billion, growth of 3% at the mid-point. Operating EBITDA is expected to be $3.6 billion to $3.8 billion, growth of 10% at the midpoint. Operating EPS is expected to be $2.70 to $2.95 per share, growth of 10% at the mid-point. -Corteva (May 7)
This blog post is for informational purposes only. The information contained in this blog post is not legal, tax, or investment advice. FactSet does not endorse or recommend any investments and assumes no liability for any consequence relating directly or indirectly to any action or inaction taken based on the information contained in this article.