Palantir (PLTR) Stock - Corporate Profits Post the Strongest Growth Since 2021
Corporate Profits Post the Strongest Growth Since 2021. The first week of August is shaping up to be one of the busiest stretches of earnings season, with roughly a quarter of the S&P 500 reporting results between Monday and Friday. Palantir kicked things off Monday with a blowout quarter, AMD reports after the closing bell today, and SanDisk follows Wednesday. Behind the headlines, the aggregate numbers tell an even bigger story: corporate America is growing profits at its fastest pace in years.
Palantir Kicks Off the Week With a Blowout Quarter
Palantir Technologies (NASDAQ: PLTR) reported Q2 2026 results Monday after the close that beat estimates across the board. Adjusted earnings per share came in at $0.41 versus roughly $0.34 to $0.35 expected, while revenue jumped 93% year-over-year to $1.94 billion, well ahead of the roughly $1.81 billion analysts had penciled in. The standout number was U.S. commercial revenue, which surged 149% year-over-year to $764 million as enterprises continued racing to deploy AI infrastructure.
Management raised full-year 2026 revenue guidance to a range of $8.15 billion to $8.16 billion, implying roughly 82% annual growth, and lifted its U.S. commercial revenue outlook to more than $3.42 billion. The stock jumped as much as 12% to 15% in after-hours and Tuesday trading, extending Palantir’s streak of consecutive earnings beats to nine straight quarters. Total contract value rose 49% year-over-year to $3.37 billion, and the company’s combination of hypergrowth and profitability pushed its Rule of 40 score above 150, a level rarely seen among large-cap software names.
Palantir’s report follows a similar AI-infrastructure theme running through recent coverage of names like Oracle and Nvidia, both of which have posted outsized cloud and AI infrastructure growth over the past several quarters. See our Stock Fact Sheets hub for the latest on both.
What’s Left This Week: AMD, SanDisk, and the Jobs Report
AMD is scheduled to report after today’s close, with analysts watching for a seventh straight quarter of above-seasonal revenue guidance, driven by improving demand in industrial and data center segments. SanDisk follows Wednesday after the close with fiscal Q4 and full-year results; current consensus sits around $8.3 billion to $8.4 billion in revenue and roughly $34 to $35 in adjusted EPS, with Wall Street watching whether AI-driven NAND demand and tight supply can keep pricing elevated. Western Digital and Cummins are also on this week’s calendar. The week wraps Friday with the July nonfarm payrolls report, a key data point for whether the Federal Reserve leans toward a rate cut later this year.
This week’s reports follow a mega-cap earnings stretch last week that saw sharply divergent stock reactions even when the underlying numbers were strong. Amazon shares jumped double digits after AWS growth accelerated to 37% and revenue reached roughly $200.6 billion company-wide, while Microsoft also rallied on cloud strength. Meta and Apple, by contrast, saw their shares pull back even after reporting results, as investors focused more on spending plans and forward commentary than on the quarters themselves. It’s a reminder that in this earnings season, guidance and AI capital-spending commentary are moving stocks as much as the headline beat-or-miss.
Are Corporate Earnings Actually Growing? Yes, Sharply
By the numbers, this is shaping up to be one of the strongest earnings seasons in years. According to FactSet, the blended year-over-year earnings growth rate for the S&P 500 in Q2 2026 has climbed to roughly 47% as of early August, up from about 38% a week earlier and just 23% at the end of the quarter. If that holds, it would be the highest growth rate for the index since Q2 2021.
Two companies account for an outsized share of that jump: Alphabet, which reported a large GAAP earnings boost tied to unrealized gains on equity holdings, and Amazon, which posted a big EPS surprise of its own. Strip those two names out, and the blended growth rate falls to a still-robust 28.8%, which would still mark the second consecutive quarter of growth above 20% and the seventh straight quarter of double-digit S&P 500 earnings growth.
The breadth of the growth matters too. Ten of the eleven S&P 500 sectors are reporting year-over-year earnings growth for the quarter, with eight of those posting double-digit gains. Energy, Communication Services, Consumer Discretionary and Information Technology are leading the pack, while Health Care is the lone sector reporting an earnings decline. On the top line, revenue growth is running around 13% year-over-year, and roughly 77% to 81% of companies that have reported have beaten revenue estimates, well above historical averages. Separately, CNBC has cited that around 85% of the roughly 300 S&P 500 companies that reported through late July beat earnings expectations, with aggregate profit growth tracked even higher when weighted by dollar contribution.
Why It Matters
The headline growth rate is flattering, inflated by one-time, non-cash gains at Alphabet and a blowout AWS quarter at Amazon, but even the adjusted, ex-mega-cap number points to real, broad-based profit growth running well above the index’s historical average. That’s a meaningfully different environment than the low-single-digit earnings growth investors were bracing for coming into 2026. At the same time, the market’s split reaction to strong reports from Meta and Apple shows that beating estimates isn’t enough on its own; investors are pricing in AI capital spending plans and forward guidance just as heavily as the quarter that just closed.
With AMD and SanDisk still to report this week, and roughly a quarter of the index yet to post results, the picture could shift further by Friday. For continuing coverage of the companies driving this earnings season, visit the Stock Fact Sheets hub, including our pages on Amazon, Microsoft, Meta Platforms, Apple, and Alphabet.
For informational purposes only. This article is not investment advice. Earnings estimates and consensus figures are sourced from public reporting and are subject to revision; always verify current figures before making investment decisions.
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