美国经济让人如痴如醉，但也头疼不已 | 经济学人商业
1
思维导图：
Summer，女，QE在职，梦想能仗走天涯翻译/音乐/健康
2
Business | Heady, with headaches
商业 | 如痴如醉，但头疼不已/上头，但也伤脑？
America’s economy is booming. Why aren’t its bosses happier?
美国经济一路高歌，但为何未见企业管理者欢欣雀跃呢？
Companies’ earnings calls have hardly been celebratory
各大公司的电话财报会议里，几乎没什么值得庆祝的内容
Good news about America’s economy seems to keep rolling in. In the third quarter gdp expanded by a barnstorming 4.9% in annualised terms. Heading into earnings season, the month or so each quarter when most firms report their latest results, a stream of upbeat economic figures led stockmarket analysts to hold their profit expectations for the quarter steady, rather than trim them as they normally do. Many called the end of America’s corporate-earnings recession.
美国经济的好消息似乎是纷至沓来。第三季度国内生产总值（GDP）的年化增长率达到了4.9%，令人兴奋不已。迈入财报季（指每季度约有一个月左右，大部分公司公布最新财报），一系列乐观的经济数据让股票市场的分析人士对本季度的利润依旧持稳定预期，而非如往常一般下调预期。许多人认为，美国公司的盈利衰退已落下帷幕。
注释：
earnings season: 许多上市公司发布季度财报的时期，一般在3、6、9、12月的后两周开始。
来源：https://www.investopedia.com/ask/answers/08/earnings-season.asp
Such optimism now looks justified. Following a hat-trick of consecutive year-on-year quarterly profit declines, America Inc’s bottom line is growing again. According to FactSet, a data provider, of the roughly half of big companies in the s&p 500 index that have reported their latest results, 78% have beaten profit expectations (see chart 1).
目前来看，这种乐观情绪不无道理。在连续三个季度利润出现同比下降之后，美国公司的利润再度上涨。据数据供应商FactSet表示，在美国标普500指数中的大公司里，大约半数已公布其最新财报，其中78%的企业利润超出预期（见表1）。
注释：
1. hat-trick: an occasion when a player scores three times in the same game, especially in football, or when someone is successful at achieving something three times. (Cambridge Dictionary)
2. bottom line: The bottom line refers to a company's earnings, profit, net income, or earnings per share (EPS). The reference to the bottom line describes the relative location of the net income figure on a company's income statement. 指公司的净收益，因其处于利润表的“底线”而得此代称
来源：https://www.investopedia.com/terms/b/bottomline.asp
Yet the mood during the quarterly carnival of conference calls has hardly been celebratory. Plenty of bosses failed to excite investors despite bringing them sound results. The reaction to the performance of big tech was particularly discordant. Alphabet, Google’s parent company, heartily beat profit forecasts but saw its share price sink by 10% after investors were underwhelmed by how its cloud-computing division was doing. Meta’s warning on macroeconomic uncertainty meant that the social-media empire’s biggest-ever quarterly revenue figure went unrewarded by markets. The lingering possibility of a recession and anaemic levels of corporate dealmaking overshadowed banks’ profits from lending at higher rates of interest.
然而，这一季度的财报电话狂欢会却难以让人欢欣雀跃。尽管许多企业管理者给投资者带来了好的业绩表现，但并未点燃他们的激情。市场反应与大型科技公司的表现尤为不一致。谷歌母公司Alphabet的利润远超预期，但由于投资者不满其云计算部门的表现，Alphabet的股价应声下跌10%。Meta警示称宏观经济充满不确定性，这也意味着虽然该社交媒体帝国获得了史上最高季度收入，但市场却没有给予它相应的回报。经济衰退的可能性依旧挥之不去，再加之企业交易活动疲软，银行从高利率贷款中所获得的利润也由此黯然失色。
注释：
underwhelm: to fail to impress or stimulate. (Merriam-Webster Dictionary)
Why the gloom? A boom in the third quarter notwithstanding, the future health of America’s consumers remains bosses’ principal worry. Small wonder. American businesses draw more than a third of their revenues directly from domestic consumers’ pockets, according to Morgan Stanley, a bank. Shoppers have seemed indefatigable lately; retail sales grew by 0.7% in September, compared with August. Coca-Cola and PepsiCo both raised their profit guidance for the rest of the year. But recently their growth has been the consequence of price rises rather than selling more fizzy drinks and snacks.
市场情绪为何如此悲观？尽管经济在第三季度有所增长，但美国消费者的未来财务状况是企业管理者们最担心的问题。这一点不足为奇。摩根斯坦利银行称，美国企业有超过1/3的盈利直接来自本国的消费者。近期，消费者似乎忍不住想要“买买买”。与8月相比，9月零售额增长了0.7%。可口可乐与百事可乐都上调了第四季度的盈利预期。然而，这两家公司的利润增长完全得益于价格上涨，并不是因为卖出了更多的碳酸饮料与零食。
Other cracks are beginning to appear. According to Bank of America, credit- and debit-card data show a downturn in spending in October, compared with a year ago. Last month Americans with student loans had to resume debt payments after a three-year reprieve. In aggregate, spending is now growing faster than real disposable income, eating into savings. At the same time, credit-card and car-loan delinquencies have been ticking up (see chart 3). Consumers tell surveys that they are gloomier about their financial situation—and who can blame them?
更多的裂痕也逐渐显现。据美国银行（Bank of America）数据显示，今年十月，信用卡和借记卡消费同比下滑。经历三年宽限期后，学生贷款借贷人不得不重新开始还款。总体而言，目前支出的增速快于实际可支配收入的增速，从而蚕食了储蓄。与此同时，信用卡和车贷的拖欠率也在上升（见图3）。消费者在调查中表示，他们对自己的财务状况更加悲观，而这又能怪谁呢？
That is worrying chief executives. ups, a delivery firm, said Americans were spending less on goods and more on services, dampening its outlook for profits. Mattel, a toymaker which owns the Barbie brand, among other things, delivered a blockbuster quarter but its outlook for Christmas was a flop with investors. Bosses at Alphabet say that the technology titan’s data showed customers hunting harder for deals and offers of free shipping for goods. On Tesla’s investor call Elon Musk bemoaned the effect of rising interest rates on consumers’ ability to afford the company’s electric cars. (Though, as Mr Musk also admitted, some of the carmaker’s problems were home-made: “We dug our own grave with the Cybertruck.”) Since the call, Tesla’s share price has fallen by 15%, wiping more than $100bn off its market value.
许多高管对此表示担忧。物流公司UPS表示，美国人减少商品消费，转而增加服务消费/美国人的消费正从商品转向服务，这会影响其利润前景。拥有芭比等品牌的玩具制造商美泰（Mattel）公司本季度业绩大增，但美泰对圣诞节的展望却让投资者们大失所望。Alphabet的管理者说，据其数据显示，顾客更加热衷于购买折扣和包邮的商品。在特斯拉的投资者电话会议上，埃隆·马斯克哀叹到，利率上升影响了消费者对其电动汽车的购买力。不过，马斯克也承认特斯拉面临的一些问题与内部战略相关：“开发Cybertruck电动皮卡等于自掘坟墓”。会后，特斯拉的股价下跌了15%，市值缩水超过1000亿美元。
注释：
「鸽了」2 年终于量产，特斯拉的 Cybertruck 到底经历了什么？
https://36kr.com/p/2350572795468292
Companies are also closely watching their costs, especially for labour. Margins were boosted by cooling wage inflation across the economy and the summer of strikes is at last winding down. In September Hollywood writers agreed to up pens. In the past week the United Auto Workers (uaw) union struck deals with Ford, General Motors (gm) and Stellantis (whose biggest shareholder also part-owns The Economist’s parent company); its members are returning to the factory floor.
公司也在密切关注成本，尤其是用人成本。各个领域的工资上涨放缓提高了利润。夏季的罢工也终于逐渐结束。9月，好莱坞的编剧同意再次提笔工作。过去一周，联合汽车工人工会（UAW）与福特、通用汽车（GM）和 斯特兰蒂斯集团（Stellantis）（其最大股东也拥有《经济学人》的母公司部分股权）达成了协议，工人正重返工厂车间。
But workers, especially in Detroit, have extracted higher wages and other concessions. And the weeks-long stoppages have already cost the carmakers dearly. Stellantis, whose marques include Chrysler and Jeep, said that they shaved $3bn from its sales. gm, which held out the longest of Detroit’s “big three”, withdrew its profit guidance for the year. So did Illinois Tool Works, which makes car parts. Even Bosses at Delta Air Lines complained that fewer passengers were landing in Motor City, possibly as a result of the labour unrest.
但工人已经争取到了更高的工资和其他的权益，尤其是底特律的工人。长达数周的停工已让汽车制造商付出了高昂的代价。旗下拥有克莱斯勒（Chrysler）、吉普（Jeep）等品牌的斯特兰蒂斯集团表示其销售额减少了30亿美元。底特律“三巨头”中坚持最久的通用汽车与汽车零部件生厂商伊利诺伊工具公司（Illinois Tool Works）均撤回了今年的盈利预期。甚至达美航空（Delta Air Lines）的高管也抱怨说前往“汽车之城”底特律的乘客越来越少，这可能归咎于此次劳工骚乱。
Happenings farther afield were also weighing on bosses’ minds. A refrain in many earnings calls was sadness at the loss of life in Israel and Gaza. Yet for now at least, conflict in the Middle East is not having large financial effects on American companies. A few firms signalled caution—Snap, a social-media firm, said some advertisers in the region paused spending as a result of the hostilities. But corporate America as a whole earns a vanishingly small part of its profits in the volatile region. American bosses who examine the direct risks posed to their business by the war in Gaza are likely to conclude that they are much smaller than the costs of, say, unwinding operations in Russia.
世界其他地区发生的事情也牵动着高管们的心神。在许多财报电话会议上，一个反复出现的话题是以色列和加沙地带人员遇难令人悲伤难过。然而，至少目前，中东地区的冲突并没有在财务方面对美国公司产生重大影响。有一些公司对此持谨慎态度——社交媒体公司Snap表示，该地区的一些广告商因为冲突暂停了广告支出。虽说中东地区的局势动荡不安，整个美国商界在该地区的利润占比微乎其微。企业管理者在审视加沙冲突给其业务带来的直接风险后很可能会得出这样的结论：风险远小于在俄罗斯撤出业务的成本。
Bosses were silent on a bigger long-term threat to earnings: higher interest rates. During the past year the fortunes of big business have diverged from those of smaller firms, especially ones owned by private-equity funds, as they have been largely immune to the soaring cost of capital. Bank of America reckons that more than three-quarters of debt borrowed by s&p 500 firms is both long-term and fixed-rate, compared with less than half in 2007, when ten-year Treasury bond yields last exceeded 5%. Eventually, however, big businesses’ debt piles will need to be refinanced at a higher rate of interest, which will squeeze profits. The earnings recession might have ended in the third quarter. But plenty of threats still lie ahead.
利率上升给企业盈利带来了更大的长期威胁，企业老板对此却缄口不言。在过去的一年里，大企业的境遇与小企业截然不同，尤其是私募基金持股的企业，它们在很大程度上不受资本成本飙升的影响。美国银行估计，标普500强企业所借债务中长期固定利率债务占比超过四分之三，而10年期国债收益率上一次超过5%的2007年，长期固定利率债务的占比还不到二分之一。然而，大企业的债务最终将需要以更高的利率进行再融资，这将挤压利润。盈利衰退可能止于第三季度，但未来仍面临许多威胁。
Charlie，往者不谏，来者可追
Leon，男，驻外民工，经济学人读者
Humi，在躺平、侧卧和睡梦中寻找诗和远方
YY，愿逆风如解意，容易莫摧残
Eva，寻路中，偶尔怀念，时常向前
Anton，男，intj，想找个麦肯锡的朋友
3
愿景
微信扫码关注该文公众号作者