投资者Say It’s Time for Earnings to Get Back to Normal

As the U.S. economy and stock market recover from the Covid-19 pandemic, investors are returning to their pre-pandemic expectations for how companies report financial results.

While investors have maintained their pandemic-driven focus on companies making long-term investments, they have shifted their expectations for earnings and guidance back to “less permissive pre-pandemic norms,” according to Boston Consulting Group’s most recent Covid-19 investor pulse survey. Investors’ recovery-driven mindsets are also evident in their shifting approach to capital allocation, with survey respondents focusing less on capital preservation and more on capital distribution.

From April 29 to April 30, BCG surveyed “leading” investors, representing investment firms with over $5 trillion in combined assets under management, about their expectations for the U.S. economy and stock market and their perspectives on impending decisions from corporate executives and boards of directors.

当被问及是否导入ant for the management of financially healthy companies to provide or revise guidance within the next 90 days, 87 percent of investors answered “yes,” the highest proportion to say so since BCG began conducting the periodic surveys in March 2020.

“在15次脉冲检查中，我们真的看到了一种集体呼气，”领先的主任和BCG合作伙伴，在接受采访时哈迪法拉格说亚博赞助欧冠. During the past year, Farag said, investors have focused solely on making sure that companies survive the pandemic. “Investors fully accepted that companies withdrew their guidance and [earnings per share] basically had no meaning,” he said.

“Things are Normalizing”

Farag表示，Farag表示，投资者已经优先投资核心能力的公司，即使以每股收益为代价。甚至目前，公司正在从大流行造成的金融中断，投资者仍在考虑幸存实体的长期增长，Farag表示。

“This long-termism is something very different,” he said. “[Investors] are looking at things much more long-term than they were previously.”

According to the survey, the recovering economy allows management more leeway to invest in their companies: Investors’ strong focus on liquidity and “maintaining financial resilience” throughout the pandemic appears to be petering out. According to BCG, only 54 percent of respondents said they believe it is important for healthy companies to intensely focus on preserving liquidity, a record low since the surveys began last year.

投资者are also easing up on the importance of quick access to debt financing for companies. In another record low for the survey, 56 percent of respondents said they believe healthy companies should quickly access all available sources ofdebt financing, decreasing 15 percentage points since April 2020.

“Same thing with giving companies a blank check — in terms of not having to provide guidance, not holding companies and management teams’ feet to the fire in terms of delivering on either guidance or consensus estimates — that is all on a pretty much record low level compared to what we’ve seen over the past 14 surveys,” Farag said. “Things are normalizing.”

关于经济复苏的乐观差异也扩展到了调查中的积极经济前景。自2月份上次调查以来，投资者对美国经济变得更加看涨，比例从2月份的63％的受访者增加到4月份的73％。2020年3月，13％的受访者预测了V形经济复苏;在最近的调查中，跃升到备受受访者的27％。

“The strong trajectory that we’ve seen this year has raised the bar for investors,” Farag said. “It’s easy to be bullish when the market is down. Now that we’re in an up market and have a lot of the rebound price in, that raises the bar a lot.”