European majors' strong earnings growth expected to have continued in Q3

European stocks

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Major European companies are expected to report substantially higher third-quarter earnings, the latest LSEG I/B/E/S data showed on Thursday, although the year-on-year growth should slightly temper from the previous quarter.

Companies on Europe's benchmark STOXX 600 index are expected to report quarterly earnings growth of 21% on ​aggregate, ⁠mostly buoyed by the energy and basic materials sectors.

That is an improvement ⁠compared to last week's forecast for 19.4% growth and would mark the second-best quarterly profit growth in the past 14 quarters. Excluding ​the energy sector, the expected growth rate for STOXX 600 companies is a more modest 9.7%.

European blue-chip companies' revenues are seen increasing by ​10.6% from a year ago, also above the average ⁠of the past couple of years.

"Demand is strong enough to allow companies ⁠to pass on higher prices which leads to higher sales. At the same time, energy costs ‌make up a smaller share ​of sales than headlines would suggest," a Deutsche Bank report said earlier this week.

European energy majors ⁠have been benefiting from the consequences of the US-Israeli war with Iran and ‌from Ukrainian drone attacks on Russian refineries, which have sharply ​cut exports ‌from some of the world's biggest producers of fossil fuels.

They are now expected to ‌post profit growth of 115.9% for the ⁠third ⁠quarter, according to the LSEG report.

Meanwhile, companies in the European real estate sector are seen delivering earnings 71.5% smaller than in the same period last year.

Next week, investors will be closely looking at results of chip equipment supplier ​ASML, Europe's most valuable listed company, and Swedish telecoms equipment maker Ericsson to ⁠assess the ‌tone of the earnings season.

(Reporting by Javi West ​Larrañaga ‌in Gdansk; Editing by Milla Nissi-Prussak)

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