America's Biggest Companies Reveal What's Really Going On In The Global Economy

Around a fifth of the S&P 500 have reported their third quarter earnings, which means analysts and investors alike are swamped under an avalanche of numbers. EPS have been pleasantly surprising thus far, with 70% of S&P 500 companies beating expectations.

While these numbers can serve as measures of past results and indicators of future performance, they often fail to highlight underlying economic and market trends.

So we examined conference calls and independent research reports to bring you market insights for the rest of 2012 and 2013 that can’t be shown with just numbers.

The political landscape, concerns about a slowing Chinese economy, and the growth potential of emerging markets are just a few of the issues on executives’ minds.

Costco says big companies can plan for and manage new healthcare requirements

"Each year for the last two or three years and certainly this year and next year under different parts of the new Healthcare requirements, there’s been some additional input numbers into our expense...So we don’t think it’s going to have a big impact to us like it may to others but you know, others may do some things that may be less of an impact to them. I don’t know, but it’s fair to say from our perspective, it’s kind of been built into our numbers and we’ve been able to handle it."

Source: Seeking Alpha

Nike warns that it's getting more expensive to make things in China

“Gross margin declined 80 basis points to 43.5 percent. Gross margin continued to benefit from pricing actions and product cost reduction initiatives, however, this was more than offset by higher input costs, primarily materials and labor.” 

Source: FactSet

American Express notes that China's slowing growth hurts Australia's economy

"...that's probably a reflection of the fact that China is slowing down and Australia's economy has some pretty close linkages to China. So that's the biggest impact that we're seeing that is influencing the slowdown in the growth rate in billings in that region."

Source: Seeking Alpha

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