TICKER TALK

After a dismal gain of just 3.7% in S&P; 500 company operating earnings in the first quarter versus a year earlier, analysts’ estimates for second-quarter earnings are falling.

But First Call, the Boston-based earnings tracker, says analysts have trimmed their expectations for the current quarter modestly so far. Adding up thousands of individual company estimates, First Call calculates that analysts overall predict a 5.7% rise in S&P; operating earnings this quarter.

For the full year, however, optimism still reigns: The consensus expectation is for S&P; earnings to rise 10% in 1998.

How would that healthy growth be achieved, given the disappointing results thus far? Analysts are assuming a big pickup in profit growth in the third and fourth quarters, according to First Call’s Chuck Hill. The current consensus estimate is for 12.7% S&P; profit growth in the third quarter and 17.3% growth in the fourth.

Thus, Hill says, “the numbers still show that analysts think [Asia] was a one-quarter problem.”

Analysts are paid to be optimists, of course, but the stock market’s action over the last month suggests that investors aren’t buying into that level of optimism.

*

Tom Petruno can be reached by e-mail at tom.petruno@latimes.com.