Earnings Season: What Q3 Results Mean for Your Portfolio
Q3 earnings season is here. Why Europe's 21% profit growth is mostly energy, why ASML fell on a record margin, and which results move your portfolio most.
Earnings season started this week, and the first two big European reports already show its main lesson. On Monday 12 October, LVMH reported third-quarter sales in line with forecasts, but its fashion and leather goods division shrank 5% when analysts expected about 2%. On Wednesday 14 October, ASML posted a record 57.5% gross margin and beat profit forecasts. Its shares still fell.
Earnings season is not about whether a company made money. It is about whether it made more than the market already assumed. For your portfolio, the reports that matter most are often from companies you never picked, because your ETF holds them for you.
Below: what the 21% headline growth figure for Europe hides, what ASML and LVMH teach about reading a result, and a worked euro example that shows which reports actually move a typical portfolio.
What is earnings season?
Earnings season is the period of about six weeks after each calendar quarter ends, when most listed companies publish their results for that quarter. For the third quarter (July to September) it runs from mid-October to mid-November.
A typical results day has three parts:
- The press release. Revenue, profit, margins and the one or two numbers that matter most for that business, such as orders or organic growth.
- Guidance. The company's own forecast for the next quarter or full year.
- The earnings call. Management answers analysts' questions, usually a few hours after the release.
Each figure is compared with the consensus, the average forecast of the analysts who follow the stock. The share price reacts to the gap between the two, not to the figure itself.
Europe's Q3 earnings: 21% growth, mostly from energy
The headline number looks strong. According to LSEG I/B/E/S data reported by Reuters on 9 October, analysts expect STOXX 600 companies to report third-quarter earnings growth of 21% on aggregate. Revenue is seen rising 10.6%.
Look one line further and the picture changes.
| Group | Expected Q3 earnings growth |
|---|---|
| STOXX 600, all companies | +21% |
| Energy sector | +115.9% |
| STOXX 600 excluding energy | +9.7% |
| Real estate sector | -71.5% |
Energy companies are expected to more than double their profits, helped by much higher oil prices than a year ago. Take them out and growth falls to 9.7%. That is still decent, but it is less than half the headline.
If your portfolio holds little or no oil and gas, the "bumper earnings season" you read about is mostly not yours. A world ETF holds a few percent in energy. A typical DEGIRO portfolio of European quality stocks often holds none.
Two results from this week, and what they teach
ASML: a record quarter and a falling share price
ASML's third-quarter press release on 14 October showed net sales of €11.7 billion, net income of €5.0 billion and a gross margin of 57.5%, a record. It guided fourth-quarter sales to €14.2 to €15.2 billion and full-year 2026 sales to €44 to €45 billion.
Most of that was good news. The shares fell anyway, by about 2% in US trading that day. Three details explain it:
- Revenue was a little short. €11.66 billion against a consensus of about €11.72 billion. Small, but at a high valuation small misses count.
- Part of the profit beat was not from selling machines. About €0.5 billion came from a higher book value of ASML's stake in Mistral AI. Analysts strip that out.
- The order number was missing. ASML no longer publishes bookings, the figure many investors used to judge future demand.
The market also had a bad day. Hotter-than-expected US inflation data that morning pushed bond yields up, and chip stocks fell across the board.
LVMH: in line overall, weak where it counts
LVMH's third-quarter release on 12 October showed revenue of about €18.5 billion, up 1% on an organic basis. That matched the consensus.
The problem was inside the total. Fashion and leather goods, the division that earns most of the group's profit, fell 5% organically, against an expected decline of about 2% to 2.5%. Weaker demand in China was the main reason. Perfumes and cosmetics, watches and jewellery, wines and spirits and selective retailing all grew, but they are smaller and less profitable.
The lesson from both: read the line that drives the profit, not the line that makes the headline. For ASML that is demand for future machines. For LVMH it is fashion and leather goods.
Why stocks fall after beating estimates
A stock that beats estimates and falls is not a market error. It usually means one of four things:
- The beat was already priced in. Before big reports, investors often trade on what they expect. If the price rose ahead of results, a beat only confirms it.
- Guidance disappointed. A strong quarter with a cautious outlook usually loses to a weak quarter with a strong outlook.
- The quality of the beat was low. One-off gains, tax effects or revaluations of investments count less than higher sales or margins.
- The market moved. On a day when rates jump or a whole sector sells off, good company news can be swamped.
The reverse is also true. A company can miss estimates and rise because the outlook improved or the miss was smaller than feared.
Which results move your portfolio most?
Take a €30,000 portfolio held at DEGIRO: a world ETF as the core and four European stocks around it.
The ETF part uses the MSCI World weight of the seven largest US tech companies, 24.76% at the end of September 2026 (MSCI factsheet), rounded to 25%.
| Exposure | How you hold it | Value | Share of portfolio |
|---|---|---|---|
| Seven largest US tech companies | Inside the world ETF | €5,250 | 17.5% |
| Rest of the world ETF | Inside the world ETF | €15,750 | 52.5% |
| ASML | Direct | €3,000 | 10% |
| LVMH | Direct | €2,000 | 6.7% |
| TotalEnergies | Direct | €2,000 | 6.7% |
| Allianz | Direct | €2,000 | 6.7% |
| Total | €30,000 | 100% |
This investor picked four stocks with care and will probably read every one of their reports. But the seven US tech companies they never chose make up 17.5% of the portfolio, more than ASML and LVMH together.
Now assume each holding moves 8% on its results day, a large but not unusual move for a single stock. The effect on the whole portfolio:
| Report | Share of portfolio | Portfolio impact of an 8% move |
|---|---|---|
| Seven largest US tech companies (combined) | 17.5% | €420 (1.4%) |
| ASML | 10% | €240 (0.8%) |
| LVMH | 6.7% | €160 (0.5%) |
| TotalEnergies | 6.7% | €160 (0.5%) |
These seven companies rarely move together by 8%, so treat the first line as an upper bound. Even at half that, they are still the biggest single driver of this portfolio's earnings season. Most of them usually report in the last week of October. That week will likely matter more for this portfolio than the day ASML reported.
The same logic explains how your ETF can drop on a day when all your own stocks are flat. We covered how to find these hidden positions in our guide to ETF overlap and Magnificent 7 exposure.
If you hold your positions at DEGIRO, Zune.Money's DEGIRO portfolio tracker imports your transactions and shows each holding with its euro value and weight, the first two columns of the tables above.
How to check earnings season against your portfolio in 6 steps
This takes about 30 minutes at the start of each season.
- List your positions with their weights. Include every broker. Then look through your ETFs and write down their top five or ten holdings with your euro amount in each.
- Keep only what is above 3% of your portfolio. Below that, a single report rarely moves your total by more than a few tenths of a percent.
- Find the report dates. Use each company's investor relations page. Free calendars online often disagree by a day.
- Write down one number per company before it reports. Not the share price. The figure that drives the business: orders for an equipment maker, organic growth by division for a luxury group, net interest income for a bank. Add what guidance said last quarter.
- After the release, compare that number, then the outlook. Ignore the headline "beat" or "miss" until you have read both.
- Decide only if your reason for owning it changed. A share price drop on results day is not a reason by itself. A shrinking core business, or guidance cut for the second quarter in a row, can be.
Keep the notes. Next quarter you can see whether the story you bought is holding up, which is worth more than any single result.
What not to do during earnings season
Do not trade on the first hour. The first price move often reverses within days, once analysts have read the details and listened to the call.
Do not confuse the index with your portfolio. A 21% earnings growth headline driven by oil companies says little about a portfolio of chip makers and luxury groups.
Do not let one result change your whole allocation. If a single report could hurt you badly, the position is too big. Fix the size, not the timing. Our guide to AI bubble risk in your portfolio shows how to measure how much of your money rides on one theme, and the AI energy stocks post covers the industrials, like Schneider and Legrand, that report third-quarter numbers in the coming weeks.
None of this is advice to buy or sell any stock. Tax rules for selling differ by country, so check with a tax advisor before you sell a large position.
See your own earnings exposure
The tables above take a spreadsheet and some patience. Import your DEGIRO CSV into Zune.Money and your holdings, weights and euro values stay current on their own, so you can see which reports matter before they come out and what they did to your total after. The free plan covers the import and the full holdings list.
Frequently asked questions
When does Q3 earnings season end?
Most large European and US companies publish third-quarter results between mid-October and mid-November. A few large names report later. Nvidia, for example, has a fiscal year that ends in January, so its results for the August to October quarter usually come in the second half of November.
What does it mean when a company beats estimates?
It means the reported figure, usually earnings per share or revenue, came in above the average forecast of the analysts who cover the stock. The average is called the consensus. A beat says nothing about whether the stock is cheap, and the share price can still fall if guidance or a key metric disappoints.
What is company guidance in an earnings report?
Guidance is the forecast a company gives for its own future results, for example next quarter's revenue range or full-year growth. Investors often care more about guidance than about the quarter just reported, because the share price reflects expectations of future profits, not past ones.
Should I sell a stock before its earnings report?
Selling only to avoid a results-day move rarely makes sense for a long-term investor. The move can go either way, and you pay fees and possibly tax to sit it out. If a single stock is so large that one report could hurt you badly, the real issue is position size, not the date.
