Earnings Chatter

Tuesday, July 28, 2026

At a glance: 45 S&P 500 names report today — Coca-Cola, Boeing, S&P Global, Corning and UPS print before the bell, while Visa, KLA and Seagate close out the day after the close.

The tape ahead

A data note first: our data build ran later than usual this morning, which means four of today's before-the-bell marquee names — Coca-Cola, S&P Global, Corning and UPS — had already reported by the time the snapshot was taken, so their actual results are folded into the notes below using the exact figures our data file captured. Boeing's headline print also crossed the wires before this edition went out, but our snapshot was taken just ahead of its numbers landing in the data file, so the table below still shows the pre-print consensus setup for BA; we'll score it against actuals in tomorrow's scorecard.

Visa (V), after the close. Consensus EPS of $3.23 implies a slight sequential step-down from last quarter's $3.31 (98% of it), and the debate is less about the number than the durability of two growth drivers: cross-border travel/e-commerce (management flagged a Middle East-related travel deceleration into March) and US payments volume amid mixed consumer-spending signals. A newer, faster-moving thread is stablecoin disintermediation — stablecoin transfer volume hit $33T in 2025 (+72% y/y) per one industry note, feeding a "why do we need a card network" debate that Visa itself is answering by building stablecoin rails of its own. The DOJ's Sherman Act debit-network suit remains a live overhang (fact discovery running to October) with no near-term resolution. The 3.68% implied move sits well above the 1.02% average realized move on the last eight prints (a 100% beat rate, +6.79% last surprise) — a rich straddle for a name with that beat record. Read-across: Mastercard reports Thursday, July 30, the direct comp on cross-border/switched-volume trends; American Express's July 24 beat-and-raise (card-member spending accelerating) was a constructive read on premium-consumer health even though AMEX shares still sold off on the print, a reminder that a clean beat doesn't guarantee a positive reaction here either. Payments Dive

Coca-Cola (KO), already reported before the open. Actual EPS came in at $0.97 against a $0.93 consensus, with revenue of $13.37B versus $13.17B expected — a clean beat on both lines, and consensus had already implied 108% of last quarter's $0.86. Organic growth was broad-based (every reporting segment posted positive volume, per the release), with Zero Sugar and a new mini-can rollout cited as drivers, and management raised full-year guidance. The print lands one quarter after PepsiCo's softer July 9 report (North America beverage volume -4%, an EPS miss), reinforcing a share-shift narrative that's been building among staples analysts all year — today's number looks like more evidence for it, not less. The 3.22% implied move compares with a 2.51% average realized move on the last eight prints (100% beat rate, +5.88% last surprise). CNBC

KLA Corporation (KLAC), after the close. Consensus EPS of $1.00 (106% of last quarter's $0.94) sits at or slightly above management's own guide range from the prior call — a low bar. The debate: KLA's own framing (from a March investor day) is that process-control spend has converged across leading-edge logic and memory, making the mix question less binary than in past cycles; the swing factors are advanced-packaging revenue ramp, a modest gross-margin drag from elevated DRAM input pricing, and China exposure (33% of fiscal 2025 revenue, down from 43%, though management recently characterized China trends as tracking better than an earlier "modestly down" call). Peer context into the print: ASML's July 14 beat-and-raise still saw the stock sell off on capex-durability worries, while Applied Materials raised its full-year semicap growth outlook to 30%+. Lam Research reports the very next day (July 29), sharing much of the same leading-edge/HBM/advanced-packaging exposure, so KLA's tone here is a direct read for that print. The 20.78% implied move (note: it's priced off the August 21 monthly expiry, not a same-week straddle, which inflates the headline % versus the 2.61% average realized move on the last eight prints) reflects a 100% beat rate and a +2.5% last surprise. KLA IR

Seagate Technology (STX), after the close. Consensus EPS of $5.09 implies a strong 124% of last quarter's $4.10, continuing a guide-up pattern — last quarter's own guidance already came in well above the Street's prior estimate, and shares reportedly jumped double digits after-hours on that call. The debate is entirely about durability: HAMR/Mozaic yield progress (Mozaic 3+ was already more than a fifth of nearline exabytes shipped last quarter, with a newer Mozaic 4+ generation now qualified at a hyperscaler), nearline capacity that's reportedly been on allocation through calendar 2026 with agreements extending into 2027, and a shift to build-to-order contracts that lock in price for FY2027. The 14.23% implied move towers over the 2.26% average realized move on the last eight prints (a 100% beat rate, +16.76% last surprise) — among the richest implied-vs-realized gaps of today's slate. Read-across: Western Digital, which has said it sold out its entire calendar-2026 HDD manufacturing capacity. Sentiment note: STX has been one of the year's most extreme AI-theme momentum names (a multiple of its starting price YTD per public trackers), which raises the stakes on any commentary that questions the cycle's durability into FY2027 — flagged as positioning color, not fundamentals. Blocks & Files

Boeing (BA), before the open (see data note above). Consensus calls for a per-share loss of $0.31, with the widest analyst range of today's marquee names (-$0.62 to -$0.01 across 20 estimates) signaling genuine uncertainty, against last quarter's smaller $0.20 loss. The setup heading in: 737 production has been ramping toward a higher monthly rate with a new assembly line activated in July, and the FAA restored Boeing's authority to self-certify airworthiness on newly built 737 MAX and 787 jets effective July 20 — a real operational milestone just ahead of this print. Full-year free-cash-flow trajectory (management has targeted a return to sustained positive FCF) and the defense segment's exposure to fixed-price program charges remain the recurring swing factors each quarter. The 5.38% implied move compares with a 3.39% average realized move on the last eight prints; Boeing's 50% beat rate is the weakest of today's group, and last quarter's +70.26% surprise came off a deeply negative prior estimate rather than a clean beat streak. Read-across: GE Aerospace and Honeywell benefit most directly from higher 737 build rates; airlines with MAX-heavy order books (Southwest, United, Ryanair) benefit from faster delivery throughput.

S&P Global (SPGI), already reported before the open. Actual EPS of $4.83 missed the $5.00 consensus, and revenue of $3.68B came in well short of the $4.12B expected — consensus had implied a roughly flat sequential quarter against last quarter's $4.97. Context matters here: this is the first full quarter since SPGI completed the spin-off of Mobility Global on July 1, and full-year EPS guidance was recast sharply lower to reflect the carve-out, a structural rather than fundamental change. Still, the revenue miss lands against a backdrop where SPGI already took an outsized guidance-driven drawdown back in February, so the market has shown it will punish this name hard on any sign of deceleration. The contrast with Moody's clean beat on July 22 (adjusted EPS +31% y/y) points toward a company-specific rather than industry-wide issue. The 4.96% implied move compares with a 3.73% average realized move on the last eight prints (an 88% historical beat rate, +3.18% last surprise). Motley Fool

Corning (GLW), already reported before the open. Actual EPS of $0.78 beat the $0.75 consensus, with revenue of $4.74B above the $4.63B expected — both ahead of a consensus that already implied 108% of last quarter's $0.70. The headline driver was Optical Communications (Corning's AI-datacenter fiber and connectivity business), with the Enterprise Networks piece growing sharply within it; management raised its "Springboard" multi-year plan targets on the back of it. The 12.44% implied move (versus a 5.52% average realized move on the last eight prints, an 88% beat rate and +1.21% last surprise) is large even for a beat that was broadly anticipated — shares had already run up sharply this year on the AI-optics theme while also seeing a sharp, volatile drawdown into the print, so positioning going in was contested. Read-across: Coherent, Lumentum and the broader AI-optics supply chain, and timing-wise, Corning's hyperscaler capex commentary is being read as an early tell ahead of Microsoft (tomorrow) and Amazon (Thursday) reporting their own cloud capex plans. BusinessWire

United Parcel Service (UPS), already reported before the open. Actual EPS of $1.76 beat the $1.66 consensus, with revenue of $22.83B above the $21.84B expected — consensus had already implied a large 156% sequential step-up from last quarter's $1.07 (the normal seasonal pattern), and the actual print beat that bar too. Management said the deliberate multi-year reduction of lower-margin Amazon volume is now complete, freeing network capacity for higher-yield SMB, healthcare and B2B business — a "revenue per piece over volume" strategy that also shows up in FedEx's own recent beat, which was similarly mix-driven rather than volume-driven. Full-year guidance was raised. The 6.44% implied move against a 6.08% average realized move over the last eight prints (75% beat rate, +4.84% last surprise) was about as fairly priced as today's table gets. One live debate flagged in coverage but not resolved by this quarter: dividend coverage, with the trailing payout ratio reported above 100% of both earnings and free cash flow by some trackers — sentiment, not fact, and worth watching as the cost program matures. CNBC

Also reporting today

Another 37 S&P 500 names round out the day's calendar, spanning financials, industrials, REITs and healthcare — none large enough to headline, but several are useful reads on their own niches heading into a heavier back half of the week.

Scorecard — reported since we last wrote

Nine of the ten names previewed last time beat consensus on EPS, but the stock reactions scrambled the simple story: Welltower's blowout beat (actual $1.60 vs. $0.65 consensus) still saw shares slip 1.48%, and UDR's outsized beat similarly reacted lower (-0.81%), suggesting one-time items or already-priced-in optimism ate the good news. Cincinnati Financial's -21.26% miss and Brown & Brown's and Universal Health Services' smaller misses all still traded up, which reads as catastrophe-loss and organic-growth softness that the market had already discounted. PayPal beat its consensus ($1.38 vs. $1.28) in this morning's print, alongside today's Boeing/Coca-Cola/S&P Global/Corning/UPS cluster — its reaction wasn't yet available at data-build time.

Rest of the week

The calendar only gets heavier from here. Wednesday brings more than 50 S&P names, anchored by Microsoft and Meta after the close alongside Procter & Gamble and Lam Research; Thursday is headlined by Apple and Amazon after the close, with Mastercard printing before the bell the same morning; Friday closes out the week with AbbVie, Chevron and Linde.

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