Last Call on Q1 Earnings Data

Today we offer one last look at earnings data for first-quarter 2025 filings — and now, with roughly 3,400 non-financial firms in our sample group, the numbers overall look reasonable.

See Figure 1, below. Net income, revenue, operating cash flow, capital expenditures, and assets were all up for Q1 2025 compared to the year-ago period. Indeed, none of the 12 major financial metrics the Calcbench Earnings Tracker follows were negative for the quarter. Can’t complain about that. 

The one point we’ve been following is the relatively close gap between revenue, up 4.2 percent from last year, and cost of revenue, up 3.4 percent. That spread is slightly wider than our previous look at earnings a few weeks ago, but it’s still not terribly wide. If tariffs or other pressures push cost of revenue up even further, that could drive companies to raise prices on their finished goods and re-ignite inflation.

Meanwhile, cash is up 1.4 percent from the year-ago period. That’s a wider margin than from a few weeks ago, but more cash is always better, especially if you’re spooked about the chance of recession. 

Also note the 16.7 percent jump in net income. that might sound like a brisk jump, but beware! Roughly $26 billion in net income this quarter was attributed to non-recurring items. If you strip those numbers out, net income only grew 9 percent — not bad, but certainly not 16.7 percent.

Balance Sheets Stronger

We also continue to be fascinated by the overall balance sheet of corporations these days, which continues to get stronger. 

In this final Q1 update, collective book value (total assets minus total liabilities) was 8.6 percent higher than one year ago. See Figure 2, below. 

So even though lots of individual firms might have worse balance sheets — at the biggest of big pictures, the overall state of Corporate America is still good. A stronger balance sheet means a company is better positioned to weather economic difficulties that might arise. 

Calcbench tracks these earnings using our Earnings Tracker template, which pulls in financial disclosures as companies file their latest earnings releases with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The Earnings Tracker provides an up-to-the minute snapshot of financial performance compared to the year-earlier period.

If Calcbench subscribers wish to get their hands on the template we use for this analysis, so you can conduct your own experiments at home, use this link to the file. (Note that the link will only work with an active Calcbench subscription. If you need an active subscription — and really, who doesn’t, when swift access to real-time data is so important? — contact us at info@calcbench.com.)

That’s all for first-quarter 2025. The Earnings Tracker will now be on vacation until mid-July, when we start cranking up the data on Q2.