Wednesday, September 13, 2017

Every quarter we try to summarize what we see in Corporate America through its financial reporting. Sometimes we’re diligent enough to write about our observations. One such moment occurred last week when we compiled a report on 2nd quarter 2017 corporate financial data.

First, we measured the aggregate change in metrics from a specific quarter to the prior year’s same quarter (that is, comparing second-quarter 2017 and 2016). We only consider firms that have reported in both periods, and we exclude financial firms as they deserve their own analysis.

In this analysis, we sampled 3,884 firms in the period and found year-over-year changes represented by the chart below:


Yes! We were struck by the spike in profits over a year ago, too, and traced it to the following firms.

Biggest 5 profits in Q2 2017 (as measured by net income)

Firm Profit (USD Billion)
Apple Inc $8.717
Microsoft Corp $6.513
Verizon Communications $4.478
At&T Inc. $4.014
Facebook Inc $3.894

But, wait! We have one more significant thing: the EU fine to Google parent Alphabet Inc.

That fine was $2.74 billion dollars. Without it, Google would have place No. 3 on the list at $6.26 Billion; instead Google places 7th with $3.524 billion. The fine impacted overall profits by 2 percent in the entire sample. Let that sink in for a minute.

Get a full copy of the report here.

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