The weak U.S. dollar and improving global GDP growth have helped multinational companies with a large international footprint and bolstered large-cap ETFs as the current earnings season revealed higher global revenue.
For example, the targeted WisdomTree U.S. Export and Multinational Fund (NYSEArca: WEXP) rose 3.3% over the past month and gained 6.2% over the past three months, whereas the S&P 500 was up 1.2% over the past month and 5.1% higher in the past three months while the Russell 2000 was down 2.1% over the past month and up 5.9% over the last three months.
WEXP tracks U.S. based companies that derives less than 60% of their revenue from the United States and the underlying index also employs a modified earnings stream weighting process that adjusts the earnings for each company based on revenue from outside the U.S.
“Now that more than 90% of the companies in the index have reported results for Q3, did S&P 500 companies with higher global revenue exposure outperform S&P 500 companies with lower global revenue exposure in terms of earnings growth and sales growth for Q3 2017? The answer is yes,” reports John Butters for FactSet.
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Looking at those companies that have reported earnings results, the earnings growth rate for the S&P 500 over the Q3 2017 was 6.1%. Among those that generate more than 50% of sales domestically, the earnings growth rate was 2.3%. For those that generate less than 50% of sales domestically, the earnings growth rate was 13.4%.
Fueling the outperformance of S&P 500 companies with higher global revenue exposure, information technology and energy sectors were the largest contributors to earnings and revenue growth in the third quarter for S&P 500 with a more global footprint. If these two sectors were excluded form the Q3 tally, the earnings and revenue growth rates for S&P 500 companies that generate less than 50% of sales inside the U.S. would have been 0.7% and 5.7%, respectively.
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