Brace for earnings numbers like you've never seen before

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In the coming weeks, Corporate America will be announcing Q1 financial results and many companies will also offer guidance on what they expect in the near future.

Considering the unusually disruptive nature of the coronavirus pandemic, many companies will preempt those Q1 reports with pre-announcements previewing what sales and earnings will look like.

Expect all those numbers to be bad.

But first, you should know that most analysts covering these companies have yet to make notable adjustments to their earnings forecasts. According to data compiled by FactSet, analysts estimate Q1 earnings for the S&P 500 (^GSPC) to have declined by just 1.2% year-over-year. This despite the world economy being in the throes of the COVID-19 crisis for nearly half of the period.

Let’s consider some of the bad news we’ve gotten from Corporate America in recent weeks.

Cruise lines, airlines, and the whole leisure and hospitality industry have been getting slammed due to social distancing and unfortunate incidents that are changing behavior. Movie theaters, amusement parks, and sporting events are also suffering as they limit attendance, cancel events and close doors. Warren Buffett recently told Yahoo Finance that people were driving less and in turn getting into fewer car accidents, which could affect auto sales, auto repair activity, and gasoline demand for that matter.

With economic activity seizing up, demand for energy has been down (see cruises, airlines, and autos above), which eventually led to Saudi Arabia triggering an oil price war, which sent crude crashing. And with crude prices down, expect plenty of bad news from oil majors, drillers, and the banks that finance these activities. Speaking of banks, in addition to loans going bad, they’re gonna get hit by rapidly falling long-term interest rates which are likely to squeeze net interest margins. And we haven’t even talked about manufacturing shutdowns across Asia, disrupting supply chains that have been bad news for companies ranging from industrials to big tech to sneakers.

And it gets scarier.

Q1 earnings could get ugly. (Getty Creative)
Q1 earnings could get ugly. (Getty Creative)

So far, the conversation about the coronavirus’s impact on business has largely been about demand, which usually means sales (aka revenue or the top line).

But these quick swings in sales tend to amplify swings in earnings.

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The sudden nature of the outbreak and what's likely to be confirmed as a rapid drop in economic activity have given companies very little time to make operational and financial adjustments to absorb the drop in the top line. And that's bad news for the bottom line.