Only two European stocks have positively surprised markets every quarter for the past five quarters, according to analysis by CNBC Pro. Italian bank UniCredit and Portugal’s Banco Comercial Portugues are the only stocks in the Stoxx Europe 600 index that beat analysts’ earnings per share (EPS) estimates every quarter over the period and had their shares rise in the following session. CNBC Pro screened for stocks that report EPS figures and have analysts’ estimates available on FactSet. Several companies do not provide EPS data every quarter and were excluded. UniCredit stood out for several large share price jumps following quarterly earnings releases. Most recently, on Feb. 5, the company beat earnings estimates by 6.1% and shares rallied more than 8% in the following session. Four quarters ago, the stock rallied by 12.8% in a single session following earnings. In February, the Milan-based lender said it planned to pay out 8.6 billion euros ($9.2 billion at the time) to investors following higher-than-expected profits. It had reported a fourth-quarter profit of 1.9 billion euros — almost three times analysts’ expectations . The banking sector in Europe has been a net beneficiary of the higher interest rate environment. Many banking stocks, such as France’s Societe Generale , Spain’s Banco de Sabadell , Germany’s Commerzbank and Sweden’s Swedbank , beat earnings-per-share estimates over the past five quarters. However, shares of these lenders did not consistently rise following the earnings. This was because of factors including a negative outlook for impairments in the future, slowing lending growth, rising costs of layoffs and more. Conversely, German lender Deutsche Bank ‘s shares popped to a more than six-year high last week after it reported a 10% rise in first-quarter profit and beat expectations. However, the bank failed to make CNBC Pro’s list as it missed expectations for the quarter ending June 2023 last year.
