Corporate Profits: `Things Still Look Awfully Good'

America's longest-lasting postwar economic boom is beginning to look more like a marathon than a sprint. The pace may have slowed, but the race appears far from over. In the second quarter of 1997, earnings for the 900 companies on BUSINESS WEEK's Corporate Scoreboard rose 7% from a year earlier, to $89.3 billion, on an 8% sales gain, to $1.4 trillion. Eliminate a huge $1.73 billion write-down-related loss by drugmaker Eli Lilly & Co., and profits would have risen 10%.

Although second-quarter profit growth slowed for the third year in a row and margins, at 6.4%, are below the first quarter's record 6.7%, it's hard to find a pessimist. "Things still look awfully good," says David A. Wyss, research director at DRI/McGraw-Hill. "In the seventh year of an economic expansion, this is phenomenal."