How much faith do you have in large companies’ capacity to remain exceptionally profitable over the next year?

If you’re a professional money manager, the answer’s “a lot.” And I suppose I can’t blame them (money managers). If last quarter’s earnings are any indication, their faith’s not misplaced.

Recall that S&P 500 companies scored a new record for margins in Q4, according to the just-wrapped reporting season. 12.6% for the index was an all-time high for the aggregate profitability metric.

Although margins slipped a bit for the median company — which is to say the new profitability record came thanks to the largest names in the index — margins are still higher than they were at any point pre-pandemic, and by a substantial, um, margin.

The figure above gives you some context for how well things have gone on the earnings growth front since 2023. At the aggregate, index level, YoY EPS growth has topped 10% for four of the last six quarters.

It thus comes as no surprise that capital allocators who between them manage nearly $450 billion expect more to come.

As the figure below, from the February installment of BofA’s Global Fund Manager poll, shows, a net 24% of survey respondents expect global corporate earnings will rise by 10% or more over the next 12 months.

That’s the most since August of 2021, when advanced economies were still engaged in massive fiscal stimulus complimented by some of the easiest monetary policy the developed world’s ever known.

In the same poll, global growth expectations were likewise upbeat and cash levels (a contrarian signal) remained very, very low.

Roll it all up and you get the most bullish read on BofA’s overall global investor sentiment metric since June of 2021.

There’s the chart, with a bevy of annotations for context.

As you can see, that measure — which takes account of the growth outlook, cash levels and equity positioning — has only been this bullish four other times in 25 years.