Gross Profit Margin For S&P 500 Companies
Tumbles In Q3, Worst Sequential Drop Since
Q1 2009
Even with the growth in rest of the world slowly grinding to a halt and in many places contracting (more on the in an upcoming post), the US continues to be spared from what increasingly appears as a perfect worldwide economic storm due to one thing and one thing only: resilient US corporate revenues and earnings. So now that Q3 is officially in the books, and we are starting to look for Year End numbers, we decided to do the quarterly Capital IQ analysis looking at S&P 500 companies (ex financials), which amounts to the 420 companies supposed to keep America "decoupled" from the rest of the world, and look at trends in revenue and gross profit. We found something troubling: while topline numbers continue to grow, and rose 2.6% in Q3 over Q2 (a substantial slow down from the 4.3% rise in Q2 compared to Q1), profits as represented by gross margins, fared far less well as total Gross Profit margins declined by 1.9% from 42.6% in Q2, almost on par with the recent historic record high of 42.8% from December 2009, to a two year low of 41.8%: a number seen last in Q1 2011 when commodity input costs soared and crushed both margins and bottom lines. Aside from the 1.9% drop in March 2010, the next worst drop in margins was back in March 2009. This time however there was no surge in commodity prices: in fact in the three months between June and August, input costs on the margin were declining substantially, or so the US government would like us to believe. And while corporate EPS did not broadly surprise to the downside, this was a function of top line pull through still going strong. So how much longer until the revenue potential of these 420 workhorse companies plateaus and start dropping? What happens to record corporate EPS if margin pressures are coupled with top line weakness? We already have one of the components: how long until the stresses in Europe and now China materialize into top line misses? We will find out in just over a month when companies begin reporting their full year numbers. Or worse, look for disappointing revenue preannouncements: while so far avoided, this time around it will be far more difficult to kick the revenue can into the future with Europe now officially entering a recession.
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