(Bloomberg) -- The biggest earnings-season rally since 2002 has pushed 34 percent of the companies in the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index above analysts’ price targets for the next year, raising concerns about the pace of the recovery. The S&P 500 is within 5 percent of the combined price projections of more than 1,700 securities analysts after gaining 14 percent since Alcoa Inc. reported first-quarter results on April 7. Caterpillar Inc., the largest maker of excavators, and Citigroup Inc., the bank rescued by $45 billion in U.S. taxpayer funds, are among 170 companies that trade above their average price estimates, data compiled by Bloomberg show. So far, analysts have resisted lifting price and earnings targets after the S&P 500 surged 37 percent from a 12-year low in March. The combination of falling profit predictions, rising valuations and higher costs for options that insure against losses are raising investor concerns that the rally may have come too far, too fast.With more than a third of the companies in the benchmark index for U.S. stocks overvalued compared with their price targets, the S&P 500’s fair value is 970.21, compared with its 929.23 close on May 8, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.
Historic Rally
The S&P 500 rose 5.9 percent last week, erasing this year’s losses, after results from the government’s examination of banks reassured investors and the Labor Department said the pace of job cuts slowed in April. Financial stocks led the measure’s advance, surging 23 percent.Futures on the index lost 1.1 percent as of 9:09 a.m. today in London. More than 200 companies in the gauge have risen at least 50 percent since this year’s low on March 9. Prices of almost half the companies in the measure are within 5 percent of the fair value target, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.The S&P 500’s steepest nine-week rally since the 1930s began as the biggest U.S. banks said they were profitable in the first quarter, President Barack Obama outlined $787 billion in spending and tax cuts and the Treasury unveiled plans to finance as much as $1 trillion in purchases of lenders’ distressed assets.
Lack of Support
“Estimates suggest there isn’t that much further to run because equities are fairly valued,” said Hayes Miller, who helps manage $30.9 billion at Baring Asset Management Inc. in Boston. “Earnings growth for 2009 and 2010 can’t support prices too much higher than where we are today.”S&P 500 companies beating profit forecasts outnumbered those that trailed by 2-to-1. A majority of companies in each of the index’s 10 industries posted results that beat projections, data compiled by Bloomberg show.Caterpillar reported 14 times more per-share profit on April 21 than the consensus estimate. Since then, 15 of 19 analysts cut second-quarter forecasts by about 53 percent and 16 reduced their outlooks for the third quarter by 66 percent. No one covering Peoria, Illinois-based Caterpillar boosted estimates, Bloomberg data show.The company’s 30 percent surge since its earnings release has pushed the shares to $39.64, 25 percent higher than the $31.83 analysts on average say the company is worth.
‘Sudden Jamming’
Nick Heymann at Sterne Agee & Leach Inc. in New York rates Caterpillar a “sell” and expects the stock will fall 39 percent, based on his price target of $24.“We’re going to have a sudden jamming on the breaks of investors’ enthusiasm for early-cycle stocks when they realize they made a big mistake,” he said in a telephone interview last week. “If you’re not properly positioned in your portfolio, you may find that you go through the windshield.”Since New York-based Citigroup reported per-share profit that was 48 percent higher than the consensus on April 17, more than 50 percent of the analysts reduced their estimates for the second quarter and half cut their projections for all of 2010, Bloomberg data show.Shares of the bank surged 35 percent last week, leaving them overvalued by 33 percent, based on the average 12-month price target compiled by Bloomberg.
Starwood Estimates
Of the 17 analysts with estimates for Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide Inc., owner of the St. Regis and W Hotels chains, 13 cut earnings forecasts for the second and third quarters since the company’s per-share profit in the first quarter beat projections by 300 percent, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.Starwood, based in White Plains, New York, more than doubled to $22.08 from its low in March, lifting its market value to $4.12 billion. That’s $1.08 billion more than analysts say it is worth, based on price targets compiled by Bloomberg.Goldman Sachs Group Inc.’s Steven Kent trimmed his profit estimates through 2011 and said on May 1 that “aggressive” cost cuts were behind the results from the first quarter. Kent, based in New York, recommended selling Starwood and says its earnings only support a price of $11, half its closing level last week.The 17-month bear market hurt the credibility of Wall Street analysts and strategists who remained bullish during the worst year for stocks since the 1930s.They were slow to recognize a recovery, which may force them to play catch-up as stocks climb, said Richard Bernstein, the former chief investment strategist at Bank of America Corp.
S&P 500 Forecasts
“We’re not real good at forecasting the future,” Bernstein, who left last month to start his own money-management firm, said during an interview in New York. “I used to tell everyone that the most-watched, least-important thing I do is the target on the S&P.”Strategists said the index would rally 11 percent last year, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. It lost 38 percent instead.Analysts overestimated earnings by an average 13 percentage points in each period between the third quarter of 2007 and the end of 2008. Better-than-expected first-quarter results haven’t prompted them to boost forecasts for the rest of 2009. Instead, they’ve ratcheted down predictions as the first global recession since World War II weakened demand.
Analysts said in March that profit among S&P 500 companies may drop 29 percent in the second quarter and 15 percent in the third before jumping 95 percent in the final three months of the year, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.
Steeper Drops
Now, they expect a 35 percent slide in second-quarter income and a 23 percent decrease in the third. The consensus is for profits to rebound 69 percent in the last quarter, with financial companies accounting for all of the gain.Analysts project that companies in the benchmark stock index will earn $57.17 on a share-weighted basis this year, data compiled by Bloomberg show. Based on the measure’s closing price last week, investors are paying $16.25 for each dollar of forecasted profit.That’s in line with the historic average of 16.3 times earnings over the past 128 years, data compiled by Yale University Professor Robert Shiller show. Strategists say stocks are fairly valued, predicting the S&P 500 will end the year at 949, with its companies producing per-share earnings of $47.06.The estimate represents a gain of 2.1 percent in the next seven months as declining profits push the index’s price- earnings ratio to 20.2. That’s more expensive than any time in the past five years.“The equity market has priced this recovery and then some,” said Barry Knapp, U.S. equity strategist at Barclays Plc in New York. “It looks pretty expensive to us.”
Rallied Past Projections
Knapp, the most bearish of the 10 strategists tracked by Bloomberg, says the S&P 500 will decline 19 percent from last week’s closing price, based on his year-end target of 757.Gains have already pushed the index past projections from Barclays, Credit Suisse Group AG, Deutsche Bank AG, HSBC Holdings Plc and Morgan Stanley. None of the 10 forecasters polled by Bloomberg News has raised outlooks for 2009.Leon Goldfeld, chief investment officer of the Hong Kong unit at HSBC Global Asset Management, which oversees more than $350 billion, said in an interview on May 4 that it’s “hard to see” enough profit growth to justify higher stock prices. The firm’s strategy will be to reduce its holdings of equities and move into bonds and cash, he said.
Chop and Grind
Options traders are increasing bets that the rally is about to end. Futures on the Chicago Board Options Exchange Volatility Index, which measures the cost of buying or selling options as insurance against declines in the S&P 500, are priced above the gauge’s level of 32.05.The premium on VIX contracts expiring this month through November indicates traders are betting the stock index will fall in the next six months.History also shows rallies from bear-market lows suffer setbacks before climbing. The last time U.S. stocks broke out of a bear market in 2002, a seven-week, 21 percent surge from the trough gave way to a 15 percent drop before the bull market resumed. In the Great Depression, a 47 percent surge after the stock-market crash in 1929 was followed by at least six retreats of at least 25 percent.
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