The calculators are smoking as they add losses accumulated across the world during the past few days. They are also adding up earnings reports for Q1 and Q2 after the latest stretch practically left them for dead. Since the end of June, the majority of analyst revisions have been downward.
For euro countries, market consensus has trimmed predictions for EuroStoxx 50 companies by 70%. Yesterday E.On and GDF Suez had their turn, and the only outstanding figures were Anheuser-Busch and CRH, who will both report figures by Tuesday so that all results on the first two quarters would be in and the market would have all the indexes numbers out on the table.
Analyst consensus predicted that net profits for the EuroStoxx companies have already dropped 3% since the end of June. At the beginning of the year, it was estimated that the 50 biggest companies in the Eurozone would earn 195,000 billion euros in profits for 2011. But the predictions did not match with real economic conditions, and this figure dropped to 189.2 billion.
We have seen how this year some Europeans have had to abandon their objectives. Among the EuroStoxx companies, Nokia, Philips and Carrefour had lowered their estimations since January, a move known as ?profit warning.? It is logical, therefore, that these three companies would top the list of companies whose investment firms lowered their expectations. It didn?t even help that the French chain assured that its ?profit warning? was restricted to Q2 and that for the entire year predictions would remain intact.
