HSBC 汇丰：全球股市洞察

HSBC：Global Equity Insights

26页　　26 February 2007

We’re taking this opportunity for a quick survey of how consensus expectations for 2006 and 2007 have been evolving in the US and Europe and in different sectors. Earnings growth in 2006 proved quite a bit better than consensus had hoped at the beginning of the year, with forecasts rising steadily throughout the year. In the US, the last two months have seen a particularly sharp upwards revision of 2006 growth expectations, which are now close to 20% (though to some degree this jump seems to be due to adjustments to 2005 base data), while European expectations are for 14% growth (charts below use FTSE indices, for better cross-regional comparability).
But that, as they say, is history and expectations for 2007 should be of more interest at this point. Here, the charts show a pretty sharp dip in US earnings growth expectations, mirroring the up-tick for 2006. It has certainly been a notable feature of the current US reporting season that expectations for 2007 have been continuously downgraded, even as companies have had a strong finish to 2006. So far, European earnings growth expectations for 2007 have proved far more stable．．．