Overall, 107 S&P 500 companies have issued quarterly EPS guidance for the fourth quarter. Of these companies, 57 have issued negative EPS guidance and 50 have issued positive EPS guidance.
The number of companies issuing negative EPS guidance is below the 5-year average of 60 and below the 10-year average of 60. Overall, this quarter ties the mark with the previous quarter for the lowest number of S&P 500 companies issuing negative EPS guidance for a quarter since Q4 2021 (51).
On the other hand, the number of companies issuing positive EPS guidance for the fourth quarter is above the 5-year average of 44 and above the 10-year average of 39. In fact, this quarter marks the 3rd consecutive quarter in which 50 or more S&P 500 companies have issued positive EPS guidance for a quarter.
As a result, the percentage of companies issuing positive EPS guidance is 47% (50 out of 107), which is above the 5-year average of 42% and above the 10-year average of 40%. This quarter marks the second-highest percentage of S&P 500 companies issuing positive EPS guidance since Q3 2021 (57%), trailing only the previous quarter (49%).
What is driving the higher number of S&P 500 companies issuing positive EPS guidance? At the sector level, the Information Technology sector has the highest number of companies issuing positive EPS guidance of all 11 sectors at 32. This number is well above the 5-year average of 22.2 and well above the 10-year average of 18.5 for the sector.
In fact, this is the second-highest number of companies in the Information Technology sector issuing positive EPS guidance for a quarter since FactSet began tracking this metric in 2006. The current record is 36, which occurred in the previous quarter (Q3 2025).
At the industry level, the Semiconductors & Semiconductor Equipment (9) and Software (9) industries have the highest number of companies issuing positive EPS guidance within the Information Technology sector.
It is interesting to note that the Information Technology sector has also recorded the largest increase (+6.1%) in its bottom-up EPS estimate for Q4 2025 during the quarter. For more details, please see pages 3 through 5 of the Earnings Insight report linked below.
Thus, both companies and analysts have been more optimistic in their earnings outlooks for this sector relative to the other ten sectors. The Information Technology sector also has the highest estimated earnings growth rate of all ten sectors for Q4 2025 at 25.9%.
The term “guidance” (or “preannouncement”) is defined as a projection or estimate for EPS provided by a company in advance of the company reporting actual results. Guidance is classified as negative if the estimate (or mid-point of a range of estimates) provided by a company is lower than the mean EPS estimate the day before the guidance was issued. Guidance is classified as positive if the estimate (or mid-point of a range of estimates) provided by the company is higher than the mean EPS estimate the day before the guidance was issued.
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