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Public Companies Have Disclosed 18.7 Billion in Tariff Refunds

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Figures reflect filings and disclosures identified as of August 28, 2026. Following the invalidation of tariffs imposed under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA), public companies have begun reporting significant tariff refunds, expected recoveries, approved claims and refund receivables. Calcbench has identified approximately $18.7 billion of gross tariff refunds across 101 public companies . The eleven largest company-level amounts identified so far account for approximately $12.1 billion of the total (two of them, UPS and General Motors, are tied at $500 million, so we treat this as an eleven-company group rather than force an arbitrary cut at ten): Company Ticker Gross refund or recovery How disclosed Walmart WMT ...
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Last Call for Q2 Earnings

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That’s it, folks — we now call time on our Q2 earnings updates! With more than 3,600 non-financial companies in our sample, we have reams of financial disclosures to review and ponder, so let’s get to it.  As usual, we start with a snapshot of results compared to the year-ago period. Figure 1, below, shows revenue up 16 percent, operating income up 35 percent, cash up 14.9 percent, and net income up a whopping 62.8 percent. Except, as we’ve said all earnings season long, that net income growth number is somewhat deceptive, because it’s driven by a small number of tech giants reporting staggering amounts of net income growth. First was Alphabet ($GOOG), which reported an astonishing $112.2 billion in quarterly net income — but $97.8 billion of that number came from Google revaluing the 6 percent of SpaceX ($SPCX) shares that it owns. That one-time item alone (not even including the rest of Google’s net income!) accounts for 13 percent of all net income among the 3,600 companies we...
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Notes on Capex Spending

Now that just about all S&P 500 firms have filed their Q2 earnings reports, let’s take a closer look at financial performance and economic trends hidden within those numbers. First up: capex spending. Capital expenditures are always a useful disclosure to observe because it helps analysts understand broader economic trends. If capex is rising, that means firms are confident enough in their business prospects to make more investments for long-term growth. If it’s falling, that suggests businesses are less confident about future growth and would rather preserve cash. The debate these days, of course, is whether capex spending for corporations as a whole is being distorted by a small number of tech firms spending zillions of dollars on AI data centers — and whether, if you strip those AI hyperscalers out of the analysis, capex spending is not as good as the overall number seems. So the Calcbench research team (read: intern trying to look busy) used our Multi-Company page to investiga...
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Earnings Update Week 5: Near the Finish Line

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Next week marks the official end of Q2 earnings season, when Nvidia ($NVDA) closes out the season with its earnings announcement on Aug. 26. Of course Calcbench will have that data too, but for now let’s see what the big picture for corporate earnings looks like with earnings from 3,500 non-financial companies already on file. Figure 1, below, is our latest snapshot. Interestingly, year-over-year revenue growth has somewhat decelerated this week as many more smaller companies finally filed their Q2 earnings. We went from 16.1 percent YoY revenue growth last week to only 15.3 percent growth this week. Operating income and net income growth also decelerated by small but still notable amounts. As we’ve been calling out all earnings season long, the 59.5 percent growth in net income deserves a bit of the side-eye . A significant part of that increase comes from one-time gains in “Other Income” that a few tech giants are reporting, rather than from robust growth in core operations.  T...
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