Updates with post on earnings

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US COMPANIES "DELIVERING" SO FAR ON EARNINGS BUT NEXT WEEK'S A BIG ONE

Estimated third-quarter earnings growth for S&P 500 .SPX companies is up from a week ago, with 87.4% of reports so far beating analysts' expectations, well above the 77% average of the last four quarters, LSEG data on Friday shows.

Based on results from 143 of the S&P 500 companies and estimates for the rest, earnings are now seen up 10.4% for the third quarter from the year-earlier quarter. That is up from the week-ago estimated growth of 9.3%.

But it is still below the second quarter's 13.8% S&P 500 earnings growth.

Among reports this week, chipmaker Intel INTC.O beat expectations for September-quarter profit, helped by cost-cutting measures.

"Companies are delivering surprises both on the sales side and the earnings side, and giving generally good outlooks," said Tim Ghriskey, senior portfolio strategist at Ingalls & Snyder in New York. "I'd say overall the impact from tariffs is fairly minimal. I'd say it's controllable."

Still, the earnings season enters a crucial period next week when five of the Magnificent Seven group of megacap companies are due to report - Microsoft MSFT.O, Apple AAPL.O, Alphabet GOOGL.O, Amazon AMZN.O and Meta Platforms META.O. Earnings for the Mag 7 group are expected to rise more than the overall S&P 500 index, according to Tajinder Dhillon, senior research analyst at LSEG.

Next week is also the busiest of the earnings season. More than 170 names are scheduled to report.

(Caroline Valetkevitch)

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