There are eleven sectors in the U.S. market, and all of them reported their annual growth in 2019. Last year was especially hard on the Energy sector, as it reported the largest Y/Y earnings to decline at -42.5%.
From the six Energy sub-industries in total, four ended the year in the red.
Oil & Gas Drilling and Oil & Gas Refining & Marketing dropped respectively by 74% and 61%. Integrated Oil & Gas declined by 53%, while Oil & Gas Exploration & Production lowered by 20%.
As the investors were expecting the growth of oil prices in late 2019, these records are hard to stomach. Analysts hoped that an increase would help to recover fourth-quarter earnings. But instead of rising, Energy futures fell further during the last year.
While the last two sub-industries had earnings growth of more than 10%, it still wasn’t enough to help the situation. Oil & Gas Equipment & Services rose by 28%, while Oil & Gas Storage & Transportation increased by 13%.
Presently, Energy stocks are between a rock and a hard place. Analysts fear that of all the eleven sectors, they may report the lowest growth earnings at -30.5% during 2019.
How did the S&P 500 companies fare?
S&P 500’s reports fluctuated during the last months. However, as the annual report shows, this index’s companies’ blended earnings growth is down at 1.9%.
Six sectors reported positive Y/Y earnings growth, led by the Utility sector, while four sectors announced Y/Y earnings decline.
Those are the Consumer Discretionary, Energy, and Materials sectors. On the other hand, the IT sector announced flat earnings.
Furthermore, oil companies also reported their Q4 earnings.
ExxonMobil surpassed analysts’ estimates by $2.59 billion, reporting Q4 Group Revenue of $67.17B. But its Y/Y growth index declined by 6.6%.
Chevron Corp. lost a whopping $6.6 billion, tumbling down to 14.3 % Y/Y.
Even though Royal Dutch Shell ended 2019 down at 17.8% Y/Y, it was still $5.41B above the consensus.
(NYSE: RDS.A), (NYSE: XOM), (NYSE: CVX)
