Middle market private companies in the Golub Capital Altman Index grew earnings by 9% during the first two months of the fourth quarter of 2024. Revenue grew 6% during the same period.
“Revenue and earnings growth remained strong for companies in the Golub Capital Altman Index for the ninth consecutive quarter. The consumer sector of the index stands out for posting higher revenue and earnings growth rates in Q4 than in any other quarter of 2024,” Lawrence E. Golub, CEO of Golub Capital, said. “The solid performance of consumer companies in our sample paints an encouraging picture of the U.S. consumer. We highlighted in prior quarters that the balance of headwinds and tailwinds facing consumers would be an important dynamic for investors to watch in the second half of 2024. Our early look at Q4 results suggests that the tailwinds from continued low unemployment, healthy wage growth, lower energy prices and lower interest rates prevailed. Looking forward, the health of the U.S. consumer may call for a slower pace of interest rate cuts than expected: one closer to the path implied by current Fed futures market prices than to the most recent Fed dot plot.”
“The consistency of revenue and earnings growth rates across sectors points to broad-based economic strength in Q4. Profit margins also continued to expand, as aggregate earnings growth materially outpaced aggregate revenue growth for a sixth consecutive quarter,” Dr. Edward I. Altman said. “We note that consumer sector performance in Q4 could be even better than it looks from the strong performance of companies in our sample, as our data does not capture the robust holiday season spending in December. That said, we encourage investors to remain vigilant about performance dispersion within sectors and within portfolios; strong median performance does not tell the whole story, and skill at avoiding problem credits and at managing them effectively when they occur are critical differentiators of long-term investor performance.”
