Earnings for Standard & Poor's 500 companies are now expected to grow by 0.9 percent year-on-year in the first quarter, up slightly from a forecast of 0.7 percent two weeks ago.
NEW YORK (Reuters) - Wall Street analysts are expecting first and second-quarter U.S. corporate earnings performance to show small year-on-year growth, according to a survey of analysts by Reuters Estimates.
Earnings for Standard & Poor's 500 companies are now expected to grow by 0.9 percent year-on-year in the first quarter, up slightly from a forecast of 0.7 percent two weeks ago.
But analysts lowered their earnings growth expectations for the second quarter of 2008 to 1.1 percent from 1.4 percent just two weeks ago.
Rising concern about an imminent U.S. economic recession has forced some chief executives of major firms to ease back on bullish expectations for the first half of 2008.
!ADVERTISEMENT!Analysts expect earnings for the fourth quarter of 2007 to fall 20.5 percent compared with an average forecast of around 11.5 percent growth when the quarter started on October 11. This rate combines actual numbers for the companies that have reported and estimates for companies that have not yet reported.
(Reporting by Yinka Adegoke; Editing by Quentin Bryar)
