Australia’s current earnings season is one of the strongest in the last 15 years, based on the proportion of companies with profit expectation upgrades from analysts compared to downgrades, according to Credit Suisse Group AG.
While analysts have have downgraded EPS forecasts for the year ending June by 0.3 percent for the S&P/ASX 200 Index, 28 percent of companies in the benchmark have had upgrades of more than 1 percent versus 23 percent with downgrades, Credit Suisse analysts Hasan Tevfik and Peter Liu wrote in a note dated Feb 16. Excluding poor results at Commonwealth Bank of Australia, Fletcher Building Ltd. and Wesfarmers Ltd., analysts’ profit outlook for the S&P/ASX 200 would be 0.6 percent higher, they wrote.
