Earnings season is just underway, with about 300 companies having reported their earnings thus far; that's about 15 percent of the reports we can expect this quarter. So far this season, 64.9 percent of companies have beaten the consensus analyst earnings estimates. That's a pretty strong figure, the highest we've seen since 2010.
But that's not the only way to look at things. Just 49.3 percent of companies have beaten their consensus estimates for revenue, which would be a weak figure for that metric. More than half of all reporting companies have beaten their revenue estimates in each of the past seven quarters.
Which is the more reliable measure? Investors would generally prefer to see revenue numbers come in stronger than earnings numbers, because revenue numbers - which simply measure sales rather than profits - are more difficult for companies to fiddle with. But so far this earnings season, the opposite has occurred.
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