, Columnist
Earnings Season's Good News Comes From the Top
Forget the profit noise. A surprising strength in revenue growth is raising expectations.
This article is for subscribers only.
Perhaps this is the one time it's actually all about the top line.
Companies began reporting their fourth-quarter earnings earlier this month, and much of the focus has been on taxes. Profits have generally been good but messy and hard to trust. Many companies reported one-time charges because of the tax change that have to be ignored to get to the true numbers. Other companies took expenses in the fourth quarter that they might have ordinarily taken in 2018 to take advantage of the shift. Those are also supposed to be ignored. (When those expenses don't show up this year, watch to see whether or not those same companies remind investors of that fact.)