Tariff-Driven Dollar Woes Help Brighten First-Quarter Earnings

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  • May 20, 2025

(Bloomberg) -- Tariffs unexpectedly devaluing the US dollar — and in turn boosting corporate earnings — was one of the few bright spots of the first-quarter earnings season in North America.

Contrary to what analysts and executives had expected at the beginning of the year, a Bloomberg gauge of the dollar has collapsed in recent months as investors moved out of US assets in response to the country’s tariff policies. The currency is down more than 6% since the beginning of the year, the worst start for the measure going back to its launch two decades ago.

Companies including Meta Platforms Inc. and Microsoft Corp. now expect foreign exchange to boost revenue by hundreds of millions of dollars, while McDonald’s Corp. sees an earnings lift of 5 cents a share for the year versus the previously anticipated negative impact of 20 cents to 30 cents per share.

The greenback has weakened “materially” in 2025, a Morgan Stanley team led by Michael Wilson said in a recent note to clients. “This is serving as a tailwind for large multinationals with high foreign sales exposure.”

Positioning in the derivatives market suggests more losses ahead, albeit with diminished certainty following positive negotiations between the US and China in May. One-month risk reversals on the Bloomberg Dollar Spot Index — a measure that indicates how much traders are willing to pay for put options relative to call options — are now the most bearish on the US currency since March 2020.

That’s showing in corporate forecasts, too. Procter & Gamble Co.’s estimated foreign exchange impact for example has fallen by a third to $200 million compared with the start of the year. Airbnb Inc., which expected foreign exchange to be a drag for the year, now has a more positive view of the currency. “Fast forward to where we are today, it’s obviously less of a headwind,” Chief Financial Officer Ellie Mertz during the company’s earnings call.

On the other hand, there are some companies for whom the recent dollar slump is a burden. One of them is Germany’s SAP SE, which generates a large proportion of earnings in the US currency. The firm’s CFO expects a hit to earnings next year as currency hedges start to expire.

Still, some companies will likely see the benefits of a weaker dollar continuing. Despite some tariff concerns easing, “there’s a structural negative narrative for the dollar, which I think will stay in place,” Bloomberg Intelligence Chief FX Strategist Audrey Childe-Freeman said on a recent call.