Earnings Chatter

Tuesday, August 4, 2026

At a glance: 52 S&P 500 names report today — the calendar reloads hard after Monday's single-name session, headlined by AMD (after the close), Caterpillar and Merck (both before the open).

The tape ahead

Tuesday reloads the calendar hard after Monday's single-name session, and the debate splits cleanly by sector. In tech and industrials, the print is about AI capex durability; in health care, about patent-cliff math and pipeline optionality; in consumer, about the budget-conscious shopper.

AMD (after the close) is the session's marquee name: consensus EPS of $1.61 (vs. $1.37 last quarter — a sequential ratio of 118%) on $11.31B of revenue (a 110% sequential ratio), with the debate centered on MI350 shipment cadence and quantifiable Helios rack-scale order momentum rather than the topline beat itself — AMD's own Q2 guide of $11.2B (+/-$300M) already sits just below the Street. The 9.7% implied move is priced well above the 3.0% average realized move over the last eight prints (an 88% beat rate), so the options market is bracing for a guidance-driven swing, not just a numbers beat. Trailing EPS growth has been steep (+164.3% 1y, +46.6% 3y CAGR) as the AI base ramps off a small prior-year number. Read-across: any commentary on 2026 AI-chip revenue targets carries straight into Nvidia's supply chain and into Arista's networking demand later tonight. TradingKey

Caterpillar (pre-open) heads into the print with a reported $63B order backlog and a debate over whether data-center-driven Power & Energy demand can keep outrunning an estimated $700M of quarterly tariff cost (full-year tariff guide of $2.2–2.4B). Consensus EPS of $6.20 is a 112% sequential ratio off last quarter's $5.54, and revenue of $19.20B a 110% ratio. The 7.4% implied move sits above the 4.4% average realized move, and CAT's beat rate is a comparatively shaky 62% of the last eight quarters — a wide spread across the CAGR columns (-14.7% 1y vs. +28.0% 5y) that reflects how cyclical the earnings base has been. AInvest

Merck (pre-open) consensus calls for a GAAP EPS loss of $0.26 on $16.37B of revenue (a 100% sequential ratio, essentially flat) — the number to watch is Keytruda (its U.S. patent runs to roughly 2028, with the new subcutaneous Qlex formulation framed by the sell side as the key lifecycle-extension lever) alongside any update on paused Gardasil shipments into China. The 4.9% implied move is priced nearly double the 2.7% average realized move, even against a 100% beat rate over the last eight quarters, suggesting the options market is pricing pipeline/guidance risk rather than a numbers miss. Seeking Alpha

Arista Networks (after the close) carries the cleanest AI-networking read-through of the day: consensus EPS of $0.89 (a 102% sequential ratio) on $2.83B revenue (105% ratio) is essentially in line with the company's own guide, and the debate is less about the beat (100% beat rate) than about gross-margin trajectory as new 1.6T Etherlink switches for rack-scale AI fabrics ramp — recent management commentary flags CY26 gross margins bottoming near 62–64%. The 11.3% implied move towers over the 2.3% average realized move, the richest implied-vs-realized gap of tonight's group. Read-across: a strong AMD data-center print earlier in the session sets up Arista's own AI-networking demand commentary. Barchart

Amgen (after the close) consensus EPS of $5.62 (109% sequential ratio) on $9.42B revenue (also 109%); the print itself is a bridge quarter while the market waits on MariTide obesity/T2D data, with three additional Phase 3 T2D studies slated to start this year and switch-study data (from Wegovy/Zepbound patients) cited as a reason the stock clawed back a prior drawdown. The 5.7% implied move sits well above the 1.1% average realized move (88% beat rate) — among the richest implied-to-realized ratios in the group given how tightly Amgen's core business typically tracks estimates. Seeking Alpha

McDonald's (pre-open) consensus EPS of $3.32 (a 117% sequential ratio off $2.83) on $7.13B revenue (109% ratio), but the real swing factor is US comparable-sales momentum decelerating from Q1's pace against a tough Minecraft-promotion comp last year — estimates on that single line range from roughly flat to just over 1%, with the McValue under-$3 platform and McCafé expansion the offsets to a budget-strained lower-income consumer. The 3.8% implied move is the smallest of tonight's group and sits about double the 1.9% average realized move, with the weakest beat rate on the slate (50% over the last eight quarters). Yahoo Finance

Gilead Sciences (after the close) shows a consensus GAAP EPS loss of $7.24 on $7.40B revenue (a 106% sequential revenue ratio) — the EPS line is a sharp reversal from the $2.03 per-share profit last quarter that is typical of one-time acquisition/IPR&D charges layered on an otherwise-growing HIV franchise, not an operating deterioration. The real story is Yeztugo, whose sales grew 72% sequentially last quarter (2026 guidance raised to $1B), plus the pending once-daily BIC/LEN combination tablet with an August 27 FDA action date. The 5.1% implied move sits well above the 1.2% average realized move despite a 100% beat rate, consistent with the market pricing GAAP-line and pipeline-timeline uncertainty rather than the HIV business itself. StockTitan

Booking Holdings (after the close) guided to 2–4% room-night growth and 4–6% revenue/gross-bookings/EBITDA growth — a marked deceleration from the 16% revenue growth booked in the year-ago quarter, with management flagging geopolitical travel disruption rather than execution as the drag. Consensus EPS of $2.44 is a 214% sequential ratio off Q1's $1.14 (Q2 is Booking's structurally strongest travel quarter), and revenue of $7.19B a 130% ratio; Connected Trip/AI-driven attach continues to be the offset analysts point to on the deceleration. The 7.1% implied move is priced nearly 4x the 1.8% average realized move against a 100% beat rate. Barchart

Also reporting today

Beyond the marquee eight, 44 more S&P names print today. Pre-open is dominated by an Industrials/Energy cluster (Marathon Petroleum, Cummins, TransDigm, Grainger, Ametek, Rockwell, Expeditors) alongside defensives Pfizer, Duke Energy and Kimberly-Clark; after the close brings Emerson, EOG, Devon and Prudential.

Scorecard — reported since we last wrote

Nothing to grade this morning — Monday's edition previewed only Alexandria Real Estate Equities, and its result isn't yet reflected in the scorecard build.

No results to score from the prior edition.

Rest of the week

Wednesday (38 names) is led by Eli Lilly before the open, the week's largest print by market cap, alongside Western Digital, SanDisk, Disney, Uber and CVS — a session split between Health Care and a heavy Info Tech storage/AI-adjacent cluster (WDC, SNDK, AppLovin). Thursday thins to 29 names behind ConocoPhillips, Parker Hannifin, Howmet and Datadog, with Constellation Energy and Airbnb also on the tape. Friday closes the week quietly with just Vistra, Take-Two and PPL.

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