U.S. stocks advanced, sending benchmark indexes to five-year highs, as earnings topped estimates and investors awaited President Barack Obama’s State of the Union address.
Michael Kors Holdings Ltd. rallied 11% after raising its forecast in anticipation of a jump in same-store sales. Avon Products Inc. jumped 19% on better-than-expected profit and a plan to consider options for its Silpada jewelry unit. Coca-Cola Co. slipped 2.7% as global volume sales missed analysts’ estimates. Facebook Inc. sank 2.4% as Sanford C. Bernstein & Co. cut its recommendation.
The Standard & Poor’s 500 Index gained 0.3% to 1,522.13 at 1:29 p.m. in New York. The Dow Jones Industrial Average increased 65.04 points, or 0.5%, to 14,036.28. Both gauges are poised for the highest close since October 2007. Trading in S&P 500 companies was 6.8% below the 30-day average at this time of day.
“This market is front-running better economic and earnings news,” John Augustine, who helps manage $27 billion as chief market strategist at Cincinnati-based Fifth Third Bancorp, said in a phone interview. “We all think of a correction coming in February. Guess what, we probably won’t get a correction in February. This market has got upward momentum.”
About 74% of the 354 companies in the S&P 500 that have released results during the earnings season have exceeded profit projections, and 66% have beaten sales estimates, data compiled by Bloomberg show.
Record High
The S&P 500 has rallied 6.7% in 2013 as U.S. lawmakers reached a budget compromise. It has more than doubled since bottoming in March 2009 as the Federal Reserve conducted three rounds of bond-buying to lower interest rates and boost economic growth.
The gauge is less than 3% below its record of 1,565.15 reached in October 2007, while the Dow is about 1% from its all-time high of 14,164.53.
“Every strategist I’ve talked to says that we’re due for a 5%-7% correction, and the reason why we haven’t seen it is because investors are buying on dips,” Diane Jaffee, the New York-based group managing director for U.S. equities who oversees about $5.9 billion in assets at TCW Group Inc., said in a phone interview. “The thought process is that people are willing to forgo the first 10% or 20% of the market rise to make sure it will really do it, and now they want in for the last 20% or 30% because they have more confidence.”
Obama Address
Obama is due to deliver his State of the Union address at 9 p.m. in Washington. He will make proposals for spending on infrastructure, clean energy and education, according to an administration official briefed on the speech. Obama will argue that fostering economic growth remains the best strategy to narrow a federal budget gap that has exceeded $1 trillion in each of the last four years.
Eight of the 10 industry groups in the S&P 500 rose today as financial, phone and industrial companies performed the best, adding at least 0.6%. The Chicago Board Options Exchange Volatility Index, which measures the cost of using options as insurance against declines in the S&P 500, fell 0.9% to 12.82.
Michael Kors, named for the designer who founded the company, increased $6.02 to $63.02. Profit excluding certain items will be as much as $1.82 a share in the company’s fiscal 2013, compared with a previous estimate of as much as $1.50, Michael Kors said. Analysts estimated $1.57 a share, according to the average of 14 projections compiled by Bloomberg.
Evaluating Alternatives
Avon Products jumped $3.25 to $20.53. The world’s largest door-to-door cosmetics seller reported fourth-quarter adjusted profit that topped analysts’ estimates as new Chief Executive Officer Sheri McCoy trimmed costs. McCoy said on a conference call that she would seek strategic alternatives for the company’s Silpada jewelry unit, where sales fell 18% in the fourth quarter.
Masco Corp. rallied 14% to $20.35. The home improvement and building products maker reported fourth-quarter earnings and sales that exceeded analysts’ estimates.
An S&P 500 gauge of homebuilders advanced 5.5%, the most since July, as all of its 11 members gained. D.R. Horton Inc. jumped 6.8% to $24.48 while PulteGroup Inc. added 6.5% to $20.55.
Fossil Inc. surged 5% to $112.87 after the maker of the namesake watch brand said its fourth-quarter net sales increased 14% to a record $947.7 million, surpassing estimates.
Global Volume
Coca-Cola lost $1.04 to $37.57. The world’s largest soft-drink maker said global volume sales rose 3% during the fourth quarter. That missed the 5.4% growth estimated by Mark Swartzberg, an analyst at Stifel Nicolaus & Co.
Facebook declined 67 cents to $27.59. Carlos Kirjner, an analyst at Bernstein in New York, downgraded the stock to market perform, the equivalent of hold, from outperform, citing a potential slowdown in price-per-ad growth in North America and Europe. He cut the share-price estimate by 18% to $27.
Dun & Bradstreet Corp. sank 6.3%, the most in the S&P 500, to $79.89. The 171-year-old provider of business data and risk-management services reported fourth-quarter earnings that missed analysts’ estimates on sluggish North American sales.
Style Shift
“Now is an opportune time for investors to shift their focus to value” when looking at U.S. stocks, according to Brian Belski, chief investment strategist at BMO Capital Markets.
Belski’s recommendation reflects a transition that started last year. Shares with low prices relative to sales, earnings and asset values are faring better than those of faster-growing companies, according to a comparison of S&P 500 value and growth indexes. The ratio between these indexes, which the New York- based analyst cited in a Feb. 8 report, has climbed 7.6% from last year’s low. Even so, it’s below the average end-of-month reading for the past 20 years.
Belski isn’t alone among market strategists in preferring value to growth. Wells Fargo & Co.’s Gina Martin Adams, also based in New York, wrote yesterday in a report that she saw last year’s shift toward value stocks as a turning point.
“We suspect value will continue to have the edge over growth in the months ahead,” she wrote. Shrinking productivity gains point to that conclusion, the report said, as they weigh more heavily on growth companies. Fourth-quarter productivity rose from a year earlier by 0.6%, trailing the third quarter’s 1.8% gain, Labor Department data showed.
