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This earnings season showed a notable acceleration in the earnings growth pace, which produces a reassuring earnings backdrop for the market.

Including this morning’s strong report from Walmart (WMT - Free Report), we now have Q1 results from 464 S&P 500 members or 92.8% of the index’s total membership. Total earnings for these companies are up +4.6% from the same period last year on +4% higher revenues, with 77.6% beating EPS estimates and 59.9% beating revenue estimates.

The +4.6% earnings growth improves to +7.7% once the large one-time charge from Bristol Myers (BMY - Free Report) is removed from the data. The Energy sector has been a big drag as well, excluding which the growth rate improved to +7.5%. On the other hand, the Tech sector has been a big contributor to the growth rate. Excluding the Tech sector’s substantial contribution, Q1 earnings growth drops to -0.4%.

Thursday morning’s Walmart provides a reassuring commentary on the health of the consumer, though a big contributing factor to the retail giant’s earnings outperformance was a result of continued market share gains from high-end consumers. That said, Walmart has material exposure to the lower-income consumer segment as well, which has been under pressure lately as a result of macroeconomic factors.

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