03:52 PM EDT, 05/06/2024 (MT Newswires) -- Some 80% of S&P 500 companies have reported their latest financial results so far in the current cycle, with earnings up 5% year over year on the back of 4.2% growth in revenue, Oppenheimer Asset Management said Monday.

The brokerage said that 401 companies in the benchmark equity index have already posted their quarterly results this season, showing signs of both "strength and softness." Eight of the 11 S&P 500 sectors have showed positive earnings growth on an annual basis, led by a 43% surge in communication services and a 39% jump in consumer discretionary. Earnings are up by double-digit percentages for information technology and financials, but down by the same magnitude for healthcare, energy and materials.

Real estate's quarterly sales are up 19% year over year, leading the sector gainers, while utilities, materials and energy have logged declines. Overall, 264 S&P 500 companies have logged positive bottom-line growth and 128 have reported negative results, while 251 companies have posted positive top-line growth, with 133 showing negative results.

The reporting season begins to wind down this week, with 54 companies scheduled to report, followed by nine firms reporting next week, Oppenheimer Asset Management Chief Investment Strategist John Stoltzfus said in a note. "At this point in the season, 79% of firms have beaten analyst estimates."

Walt Disney (DIS), Uber Technologies ( UBER ) , Airbnb ( ABNB ) , Warner Bros. Discovery ( WBD ) and Constellation Energy ( CEG ) are among the major companies scheduled to report results this week.

The S&P 500 closed higher last week, along with the Dow Jones Industrial Average and the Nasdaq Composite. Better-than-projected quarterly earnings by S&P 500 companies and a recent pullback in stock prices likely brought price-to-earnings multiples of several key US benchmarks "back to attractive levels," Stoltzfus said.

On Wednesday, the Federal Reserve's monetary policy committee left its benchmark lending rate unchanged for its sixth consecutive meeting, saying there's been "a lack of further progress" in bringing inflation down in recent months. The central bank's Federal Open Market Committee tightened monetary policy by 525 basis points from March 2022 through July 2023 to tame inflation.

"The Fed's data dependency continues in our view to be the best course of action to dealing effectively with the vexing sticky inflation that was seen over the course of the first three months of this year," Stoltzfus said Monday. "While the risk of recession could increase the longer it takes to bring sticky inflation in check, the extent of the rate hikes and pauses since March of 2022 and the subsequent effectiveness of the Fed's actions to date suggest to us the Fed stands a good chance of delivering the goods this cycle without a recession."

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