Just a handful of companies reporting earnings next week have a track record of beating Wall Street’s expectations. Palo Alto Networks and Intuit are on that list. Second-quarter earnings have assuaged investors’ fears about slowing economic growth. More than 80% of S & P 500 companies that have reported so far have posted a positive earnings surprise for the second quarter, which is above the five-year average, according to FactSet data. More often than not, stocks can get a boost from strong earnings results. With this in mind, CNBC Pro screened data from Bespoke Investment Group for companies due to report next week that have a history of beating earnings expectations and then rising on the back of those results. The stocks below have beaten earnings expectations, on average, 75% of the time and posted a move of at least 1% on the reporting day. Take a look: One company that topped the list was Palo Alto Networks, which has a 94% average earnings beat rate and boasts an average postearnings move of 1.1%. Shares of the cybersecurity company are down more than 3% this year, but jumped more than 5% this week. Palo Alto Networks has seen a series of upgrades and price target increases in recent days as Wall Street assesses the company’s announcement to acquire Israeli identity security platform CyberArk in a deal valued at roughly $25 billion. Deutsche Bank analyst Brad Zelnick on Tuesday upgraded Palo Alto Networks to buy from hold and lifted his price target by $20 to $220, which implies about 25% potential upside. “Despite recent share underperformance and some investor questions following the announced CYBR deal, the core business appears to be humming along nicely,” Zelnick said. PANW 1Y mountain Palo Alto Networks stock over the past year. Intuit also has a history of exceeding analysts’ earnings expectations, with an average beat rate of 87%. Shares of the financial planning company are up more than 14% this year. Intuit is one of the leading software adopters of artificial intelligence , with its chief financial officer having said during the company’s earnings call in May that internally deployed AI tools have increased the productivity of its developers. Bank of America is one Wall Street firm that is bullish on Intuit’s position in the AI race. Analyst Brad Sills said in a June 12 note that he views “Intuit as a key AI beneficiary in software, with a multi-year adoption and monetization cycle in the [small- and medium-sized business] and consumer segments” as the company capitalizes on AI adoption across products including Turbo Tax, Credit Karma, QuickBooks and Mailchimp. Other stocks that made the cut are Analog Devices and Keysight Technologies , which have generally beaten earnings 90% and 77% of the time, respectively.
