An employee rings up a customer’s merchandise at The Container Store in Chicago, Illinois.
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There’s a group of companies whose stock prices tend to rise or fall dramatically following earnings reports.
Bespoke Investment Group analyzed the most volatile names on earnings, looking at companies that have been publicly traded for at least five years. Container Store, which went public in 2013, sees the biggest moves of that group historically, with an average one-day change of 17.6% in either direction. Netflix is another big mover on the list with an average 12.8% rise or fall on earnings days.
When the list included companies with only five years of earnings reports, or 20 quarters, Bespoke founded more volatility. Yelp tends to see 15.18% moves after earnings, while online travel company Travelzoo also experiences big moves with an average one-day change of 13%.
When the time frame got even lower, including companies with as few as six quarters of reports, the moves were even more dramatic. Roku, which has been public for seven quarters, on average sees 25% swings the day after it reports.
If a company reports in the morning, Bespoke included the price change for that day and if it reported after the closing bell, it used price changes for the following trading day.
Earnings season fully kicks off next week with Citigroup results out on Monday, followed by other major Wall Street banks throughout the week. Microsoft, UnitedHealth, IBM, Philip Morris, United Airlines and Netflix also report second-quarter results.
There could be more volatility than usual this earnings season. Because of uncertainty surrounding trade wars and global growth, a bulk of U.S. companies are lowering the bar for their earnings reports. Of the 114 companies that have issued earnings guidance for the period, 77% have provided negative forecasts, according to data from FactSet.
“Analyst revisions heading into the reporting period have been very negative,” Paul Hickey, co-founder of Bespoke Investment Group, told CNBC. “In the last three years, there has only been one other quarter where the pace of negative revisions from analysts was greater, so expectations as a whole are low.”
