Calcbench

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...

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 $9.4 billion of gross tariff refunds across 55 public companies . The 10 largest company-level amounts identified so far account for approximately $7.8 billion of the total: Company Ticker Gross refund or recovery How disclosed Apple AAPL $2.19 billion* Narrative and earnings disclosure Ford Motor F $1.30 billion Narrative disclosure Nike NKE ...

We are now nearing the end of Q2 earnings season, with data from more than 3,000 non-financial companies in our sample group. At this point the overall picture isn’t likely to change much, and it really hasn’t changed much since last week either: this has been a good quarter for Corporate America. As you can see in Figure 1, below, revenue, operating income, EBIT, and net income are all up from the year-ago period by double digits. Cost of revenue and operating expenses are up by double digits too, but neither one is exceeding revenue growth, so companies are keeping their financial noses above water. Can’t complain about any of that.  We did want to call out that impressive-looking net income number, up 65.9 percent from Q2 2025. A jump like that might seem super-cool at first glance, but remember: a significant part of it comes from one-time gains that a handful of companies are reporting, rather than booming growth in core operations. We first noted that issue several weeks ago...

Everyone knows that the tech giants and AI hyperscalers are betting big on data centers. Calcbench has been taking a deep dive into Q2 disclosures of those companies, and today we offer a better sense of how big those bets are. Bets, by the way, that aren’t included on the tech giants’ balance sheets . These bets travel under the rather boring names “uncommenced leases” or “unrecognized lease commitments.” As the name implies, these are leases (typically for AI data centers) that the company has signed and do exist, but the leases haven’t yet started and don’t appear on the company’s balance sheet.  Altogether, among the six companies leading the charge on data center development, these uncommenced lease expenses now exceed $1 trillion. Figure 1, below, shows how the expenses have soared in recent years — from $321.5 billion in 2024, to $700.2 billion in 2025, to $1.13 trillion as of Q2 2026.  As you can see, different companies are racking up these u...

This was a busy week for corporate earnings, as more than 1,000 companies across a wide range of industries filed their Q2 earnings reports. We now have 2,050 non-financial companies in our famed Earnings Tracker, so let’s see where things stand. As you can see in Figure 1, below, the numbers still look respectable — even a bit better than last week’s earnings update .  Revenue is up 16.1 percent from the year-ago period, while cost of revenue is up 14.4 percent. The spread between those numbers (170 basis points) is a bit better than last week, when the spread was only 100 points.  Operating income is up 31.5 percent (better than last week), and net income is up 63.7 percent (still largely thanks to a one-time accounting adjustment from Google Alphabet’s stake in SpaceX, which we discussed a few weeks ago ). Cash, EBIT, total assets, cash flow from operations; they’re all moving in the right direction. Questions we still want to explore as soon as our crack research team get...