NEW YORK — Is the great profit engine of corporate America running out of steam?
While other parts of the economy struggled the past two years, large companies managed to rack up higher profits quarter after quarter.
Now reality is catching up with big business.
As companies close their books on the final three months of last year, the big ones in the Standard & Poor’s 500 stock index appear likely to earn about $230 billion — $12.6 billion more than a year earlier. But the increase, 5.8 percent, is less than half the speed at which quarterly profits grew the first nine months of 2011, and one-fifth the speed they have grown since the beginning of 2010.
What’s more, almost all the profit growth comes from two companies, one of them among America’s most favorite, the other among its most hated — Apple and bailed-out insurance company AIG.
Take away those two
and profits for the remaining 498 are expected to grow a measly 1.1 percent, according to FactSet, a provider of financial data.
