Tag: Earnings Guidance

CEOs Start to Place Big Bets as Pandemic Grinds On

Plenty of CEOs remain stuck working from home and boards may still be meeting virtually, but companies are shifting their sights from surviving the coronavirus pandemic to charting new courses through it.

Verizon Communications Inc. is jumping into the low end of the wireless market. Clorox Co. directors picked their next leader. A railroad set a new profit goal for the year. New owners are taking Neiman Marcus out of bankruptcy.

That attitude is a change from earlier in the year, when most U.S. companies spent the first months of the pandemic hunkering down, slashing costs, hoarding cash and pulling their financial forecasts. As the coronavirus’s spread continues in the U.S. and abroad, businesses have concluded they’ll coexist with it for some time. So they are reviving stalled operational plans, changing leaders and reissuing financial targets.

Covid-19: The Impact on Guidance, Buybacks and Dividends in the S&P 1500

Covid-19 has led to widespread changes to financial guidance, buyback programs and dividend payments across the whole of the US equity market, although notable differences exist between different market-cap segments, according to new research.

IR Magazine has worked with MyLogIQ, a provider of intelligence tools focused on compliance and disclosure, to understand how companies on the S&P Composite 1500 Index have responded to disruption caused by the pandemic.

To gather the data, MyLogIQ analyzed SEC filings of companies included in the S&P 1500, which accounts for around 90 percent of US market capitalization, between March 1 and June 12. The firm used its AI-based platform to search for concepts such as ‘withdrawing guidance’, ‘dividend suspension’ and ‘share-buyback pause’.

According to the analysis, 39 percent of S&P 1500 companies withdrew financial guidance during this period. Looking at the main market-cap segments of the S&P 1500, guidance was withdrawn by 47 percent of companies on the S&P 500, 35 percent of the S&P MidCap 400 Index and 34 percent of the S&P SmallCap 600 Index.