S&P 500 profit growth hits a 30-year high, boosting bullish sentiment in U.S. stocks as AI shifts from a cost center to a profit center.

S&P 500 posted 31% year-over-year earnings growth in Q2, the strongest pace since 1992 excluding recession and recovery periods, far exceeding the prior consensus forecast of 23%. The core driver is AI’s substantial boost to profit margins, with net profit margins jumping from the long-stagnant 14% to nearly 16%. Mark Hackett, chief market strategist at Nationwide Funds Group, noted that AI was a cost center for companies over the past five years, but this year has seen a turning point, with AI now truly acting as a profit center. The sharp earnings growth outpaced the index’s rally, pushing the S&P 500’s P/E ratio down from around 26x at the start of the year to below 22x, completing a "valuation reset". Scott Rubner, head of strategy at Citadel Securities, said: "Right now, earnings are doing the heavy lifting, not valuation expansion." Grace Peters, co-head of global investment strategy at JPMorgan Private Bank, also noted that double-digit earnings upgrades outside of a recovery period are almost unprecedented. Earnings expansion is no longer just a story for large-cap stocks. About three-quarters of US companies that have reported earnings beat both earnings per share (EPS) and revenue estimates, with small and mid-cap stocks’ beat rate near post-pandemic historical highs. European companies’ Q2 net profit margins surged to a record 12%, while the MSCI Europe Index posted 18% year-over-year earnings growth, its best performance since 2022. For the Asia-Pacific region, earnings upgrades since June have neared 10%, the largest such increase for the same period since 2009. Strategists have raised their full-year S&P 500 earnings growth forecast from 15% at the start of the year to 27%, with the average year-end target price rising to 7,894 points. Nvidia’s earnings report will be the last key piece of the puzzle this month, further testing the strength of this current earnings bull run.