3 Stocks To Buy Ahead Of Q3 Earnings: PYPL, AXP, ETFC

Bank earnings helped kick off the busy part of third-quarter earnings season late last week. The week of October 15 is also chock-full of major earnings reports from giants like Netflix (NFLX – Free Report) and Morgan Stanley (MS – Free Report). With that said, let’s look at three other companies that seem like buys ahead of their quarterly earnings releases later this week.

Earnings Season Overview

JPMorgan (JPM – Free Report), Wells Fargo (WFC – Free Report), and Citigroup (C – Free Report) began Q3 earnings season with a bang last week. The three banking giants saw their combined earnings jump 16.1% on 3.4% higher revenues. Since then, fellow finance sector powers, Bank of America (BAC – Free Report), Goldman Sachs (GS – Free Report), and Morgan Stanley posted strong quarterly performances.

Bank of America’s third-quarter profit surged 32% on the back of higher interest rates. Morgan Stanley and Goldman’s quarterly profits jumped 20% and 19%, respectively. Overall, total Q3 earnings are projected to jump 18.7% for S&P 500 companies, based on our current Zacks Estimates. Plus, revenues are expected to climb 7.8%, with double-digit earnings growth projected for 10 out of the 16 Zacks sectors.

Now that we have a better understanding of the full Q3 earnings picture, it’s time to dive into three stocks that look like they might be worth buying ahead of the release of their third-quarter financial results.

PayPal (PYPL – Free Report)

PayPal, which spun off from eBay (EBAY – Free Report) in 2015, boasts 244 million active account holders in roughly 200 markets. The fintech powerhouse has completed a series of acquisitions recently that will help it better compete in a changing financial environment against Square (SQ – Free Report) and others.

Our current Zacks Consensus Estimate is calling for PayPal’s Q3 revenues to pop by 13.2% to reach $3.67 billion. At the bottom end of the income statement, PayPal’s adjusted quarterly earnings are projected to jump by roughly 17.4% to hit $0.54 per share.