Vertiv and Amazon are among the companies reporting next week with strong earnings momentum. Next week is a doozy for the first-quarter earnings season, with 88 companies in the S & P 500 — or more than 17% of the benchmark — and around half a dozen Dow Jones Industrial Average members on the calendar to report their latest results. And analysts have recently been getting more bullish on some stocks heading into next week. CNBC Pro screened FactSet data to find the companies reporting results next week that have lately seen accelerated earnings momentum. Stocks in the table below all met the following criteria: Earnings estimates revised up by at least 10% in the past three- and past six months An average analyst price target offering upside of at least 20% Buy ratings from at least 60% of analysts covering the company One stock seeing improved earning estimates is Vertiv, which reports next Wednesday. Shares of the infrastructure and fata center services provider have surged 89% this year. On Monday, Bank of America reiterated its buy rating on Vertiv and raised its price objective to $330 from $277, implying about 12% upside. “We acknowledge that the ‘bar’ for VRT shares is to post beat-and-raise results,” but recent data “supports this outcome,” wrote Bank of America analyst Andrew Obin. “We raise our price objective by $53 from $277 to $330, based on 30x (previously 25x) our 2027 adj. EBITDA to reflect these better industry trends. Our target multiple is a premium to the 19x peer average on 2026E, given above-peers earnings growth.” Major cloud service providers should increase their project capital expenditures by 60% year over year to $715 billion in 2026, and another 17% to $835 billion in 2027, Obin said. Last month, Vertiv announced that it will expand its production capacity at plants in Pennsylvania, Ohio, South Carolina and Mexico. Amazon, up 10% this year, could also get a post-earnings boost. The dominant e-commerce platform in the U.S. reports earnings next Thursday. Truist Securities maintained its buy rating on the stock ahead of this coming set of results. The bank’s new price target of $285, up from $280, implies upside of 14% from Amazon’s Thursday close. “We remain constructive on AMZN ahead of 1Q26 results which should show further growth acceleration at [Amazon WSeb Services] and above-industry growth across eCommerce and Digital Ads,” wrote analyst Youssef Squali. “We expect AWS revenue growth to accelerate to +25% in 1Q26 from +23% in 4Q25, with sustained momentum throughout FY26 driven by faster adoption in AI workloads from a growing roster of partnerships including OpenAI and Anthropic, and significant [data center] capacity coming online in 2026.” Any macroeconomic turbulence and higher fuel costs, assuming they prove short lived, should “remain manageable,” the analyst added.
