Earnings Chatter

Friday, July 24, 2026

At a glance: A light Friday — five S&P 500 names report before the open: American Express, NextEra Energy, Verizon, SLB and Charter Communications. Today's data also lists ExxonMobil, but that appears to be a stale calendar entry — see note below. It's also the last trading day of the week, so this edition closes with the full week-ahead calendar.

The tape ahead

A data note first: today's build lists ExxonMobil (XOM) among the pre-open reporters, and it appears below in the table for completeness, but ExxonMobil's own investor-relations release (issued July 21) confirms its Q2 2026 results are scheduled for Friday, July 31, with a call at 8:30am CT — not today. This looks like a stale or duplicated calendar entry at the data source; treat today's XOM row as unconfirmed and watch for it (correctly) next Friday, when Chevron also reports. Five names are genuinely on today's calendar, all before the open.

American Express (AXP), pre-open. Q1 set a high bar — card member spend grew 10% (best in three years), Platinum spend accelerated even after last July's fee hike to $895, and retention held near 100%. The question today is whether that spend and fee-revenue momentum carried through a full quarter at the new price point, or decelerates as the initial fee-hike lift laps; watch loan growth and credit mix alongside the headline. Management reaffirmed FY26 guidance of 9–10% revenue growth and $17.30–$17.90 EPS at Q1, and JPMorgan upgraded the stock to Overweight on July 13 (PT $328→$400, sell-side commentary, not fact). The 3.66% implied move sits above the 2.98% average realized move on the last eight prints, and consensus's 102.9% of last quarter's EPS implies only modest sequential growth against a still-strong 1/3/5/10-year EPS CAGR set (+9.6%/+15.9%/+32.0%/+11.7%). AXP's closed-loop model makes it a cleaner affluent-consumer read than card-network volumes, and the credit backdrop remains bifurcated — delinquency stress concentrated in lower-prime issuers, not premium ones like Amex. Benzinga

NextEra Energy (NEE), pre-open. Two engines are in play: Florida Power & Light's steady rate-base growth, and the swing factor — Energy Resources' renewables/storage origination pace against surging hyperscaler power demand. Backlog hit a record ~33GW after Q1 added ~4.0GW; watch the backlog delta and contracting cadence as much as the headline beat. Q1 reaffirmed a 2026 adjusted EPS guide of $3.92–$4.02 (targeting the high end) and an 8%+ CAGR through 2032. Sell-side is split into the print — Jefferies lifted its target on data-center demand while BofA and BMO trimmed on rate/cost-of-capital concerns (sentiment, not fact). Unusually, the 2.68% implied move sits below the 3.94% average realized move on the last eight prints, making the straddle look cheap relative to NEE's own history; consensus implies roughly flat sequential EPS (101.2% of last quarter) against a 1/3/5/10-year CAGR set of -2.1%/+16.3%/+17.4%/+8.1%. A strong backlog update here lifts the whole data-center-power trade (Constellation, Vistra, Talen); a soft one raises rate-sensitivity concerns for capital-intensive utilities broadly. pv magazine USA

Verizon (VZ), pre-open. The debate is whether Q1's inflection — the first positive Q1 postpaid phone net adds in 13 years, churn improving to 0.97% — extended into Q2, or was pull-forward; watch net-add trend and Fios/fixed-wireless momentum now with a full Frontier quarter in the base. Verizon raised full-year adjusted EPS growth guidance to 5–6% (from 4–5%) at Q1 and guided postpaid phone net adds to the upper half of its 750k–1M range, while sell-side has been trimming price targets into the print even as EPS estimates drifted marginally higher — a bullish-guide/skeptical-target split worth flagging as sentiment. The 3.65% implied move is roughly in line with the 3.75% average realized move on the last eight prints, and consensus implies a slight sequential step-down (98.9% of last quarter) against a still-negative 1/3/5/10-year EPS CAGR set, a reminder this guide is asking for an inflection versus the trend line rather than a continuation of it. Verizon closes out this week's telecom trio: AT&T (Wednesday) and T-Mobile (Thursday) already printed, both flagging a healthier-than-feared subscriber backdrop into today's report. Verizon IR

SLB, pre-open. Management flagged a $0.06–$0.08 EPS headwind from Middle East activity disruption for this quarter — the debate is pace of recovery there, not North America pressure pumping (that's Halliburton's story), with digital/ARR growth and early Liberty Energy data-center JV monetization as the offsetting bull case. Q1 reiterated FY26 capex of ~$2.5B, buybacks of at least $2.4B and total shareholder returns above $4B, with free cash flow weighted to the second half. Sell-side has been cutting targets steadily into the print all month (Barclays, Raymond James, Susquehanna, UBS, TD Cowen all trimmed), even as consensus stays "Strong Buy." The 2.96% implied move sits modestly above the 2.80% average realized move on the last eight prints, and consensus implies essentially flat sequential EPS (99.7% of last quarter). Halliburton's Wednesday beat came with a warning that oilfield-services demand is softening faster than expected — a cautious read into SLB and Baker Hughes (next week), with SLB's international/offshore skew the key divergence point from Halliburton's NA-levered book. Seeking Alpha

Charter Communications (CHTR), pre-open. Broadband net losses have pressured the stock for multiple quarters (Q1 saw a 120k internet loss) on fiber overbuild and fixed-wireless substitution from the wireless carriers; the question is whether the loss rate is stabilizing or still widening, alongside whether Spectrum Mobile's line growth (370k added in Q1, +17% y/y) is decelerating under rival device-subsidy promotions. Estimate revisions have been uniformly negative into the print — consensus EPS cut roughly 2% over the last 30 days, with Barclays, Wells Fargo, Goldman (Sell) and RBC all trimming price targets in the last three weeks, and CHTR has missed EPS in each of the last four quarters. That shows up in the numbers: a 14.4% implied move, by far the widest of today's group, against an 11.9% average realized move, and only a 62% beat rate with a -9.1% surprise last quarter. Comcast's broadband losses narrowed to 167k this week (from 201k a year ago) alongside record wireless adds — if Charter's losses don't narrow similarly, it reads as company-specific share loss rather than industry-wide FWA pressure. The $34.5B Cox merger is also live in the background: FCC-cleared, but California's utility-commission vote isn't until August 13, against a DOJ antitrust-clearance deadline of September 15 — a refiling-risk overhang likely to come up on the call. Broadband Breakfast

Scorecard — reported since we last wrote

Thursday's cohort scored a clean tape: 25 of 29 beat consensus. Digital Realty's outsized 191.8% surprise drew only a muted +0.52% reaction, while Lockheed Martin's 10.3% beat (helped by an easy prior-year comp against a classified-program charge) turned into a 10.5% pop. But beating didn't guarantee a rally — T-Mobile (+20.2% surprise, -10.75%), Comcast (+7.6%, -6.8%), Dover (+0.8%, -7.8%) and Deckers (+7.3%, -6.09%) all sold off anyway, a reminder that guidance and forward commentary are moving these stocks more than the quarter itself. The four misses were modest: Thermo Fisher (-5.3% surprise, still +8.71% on the print), Huntington Bancshares (-6.1%, -4.76%), Tractor Supply (-1.3%, +3.27%) and Allegion (-4.0%, an unexplained +10.45%).

Rest of the week

Nothing further scheduled — today closes out this week's S&P 500 reporting calendar.

Nothing further scheduled.

The week ahead

Volume builds through the week and peaks midweek: Monday is light (10 names, topped by Welltower and Cadence Design Systems), then the calendar fills fast — 46 names Tuesday, 54 Wednesday and 52 Thursday, before tapering to 14 on Friday. The two heaviest days carry the AI-capex torch that Alphabet and Tesla lit this week: Microsoft and Meta report Wednesday alongside a deep semicap bench (Lam Research, Qualcomm), and Apple and Amazon follow Thursday with more chip-supply-chain names (KLA, Seagate, NXP, Teradyne already reporting Tuesday) — effectively the back half of Big Tech earnings season. Payments gets its turn after today's Amex print: Visa Tuesday and Mastercard Thursday, plus S&P Global. Consumer staples stack up all week (Coca-Cola and Mondelez Tuesday, Procter & Gamble Wednesday, Altria Thursday, Colgate-Palmolive Friday), and industrials/logistics get a tariff-exposure read from Boeing, UPS and Illinois Tool Works on Tuesday. Energy wraps up the sector Friday with Chevron — and, per its own investor-relations release, ExxonMobil as well (its Q2 date is confirmed for July 31, though it doesn't yet appear on the data build's calendar for that day; see the note above).

Informational only — not investment advice. Figures are consensus/estimates and option-implied values from public sources and may be revised.