Will the profits of the Seven Greats disappear?

The Magnificent Seven have been the stars of the S&P 500 over the past several years, but the group’s period of exceptional earnings growth may be coming to an end.

Only one of the Magnificent Seven companies — artificial intelligence chip giant Nvidia (NVDA) — is expected to be among the top five contributors to S&P 500 earnings growth in the third quarter, according to John Butters, vice president and chief earnings analyst at FactSet Research. This time last year, two of the Mag 7’s — Nvidia and Alphabet (GOOG) — were expected to be in the top five, and two others — Amazon (AMZN) and Meta Platforms (META) — were expected to be in the top 10.

This year, the other four companies expected to contribute the most to index-wide earnings growth are Eli Lilly (LLY), Intel (INTC), Boeing (BA), and Micron (MU). Eli Lilly, Intel and Boeing all benefit from easy comparisons to last year. On the other hand, Nvidia and Micron were the biggest contributors to growth last year and are expected to report earnings growth of 53% and 157%, respectively, underscoring how important demand for AI is for S&P 500 companies.

The Mag 7’s growth has been moderate, but still better than most

Artificial intelligence will also be the focus when the Magnificent Seven reports earnings, starting with Tesla (TSLA) after markets close on Wednesday. Microsoft (MSFT), Alphabet, and Meta Platforms will report exactly a week later, followed by Apple (AAPL) and Amazon next Thursday.

According to analysts surveyed by FactSet, Mag 7’s profits rose an estimated 14.9% in the latest quarter, more than twice as fast as the so-called “Other 493” (6.7%). This gap would be larger without Tesla, which is expected to report its fourth straight quarter of contraction as it faces inflation and rising borrowing costs that have put a new car out of reach for many consumers.

The only other company expected to report a decline in earnings since last year is Amazon, where earnings are likely to fall less than 1%, according to analyst estimates compiled by Visible Alpha. The rest of the Mag 7 companies that reported profits in the next two weeks are expected to say their profits grew between 1% (Alphabet) and 10% (Microsoft) in the latest quarter.

The “other 493” are expected to continue to fill the earnings gap over the next year. Mag 7’s earnings growth is expected to remain steady at around 15% through the first quarter of 2026, while the growth rate of the rest of the index is expected to accelerate to 11% in the first quarter of 2026 and eventually reach 14.6% in the third quarter of next year, according to FactSet Research.

However, Mag 7 could outperform expectations as it did in the second quarter when earnings rose nearly 27%, easily beating Wall Street’s expectations of 14%.