Wall Street set to open higher on strong earnings from Dow members

By Shreyashi Sanyal

(Reuters) - U.S. stocks were set to open higher on Wednesday, with strong earnings from Dow components IBM, United Technologies and Procter & Gamble looking to propel a rebound after Wall Street suffered its second biggest decline in 2019.

Futures pointed to a 0.7 percent gain on the Dow Jones Industrial Average at the open, with shares of International Business Machines Corp jumping 6.9 percent after projecting 2019 profit above expectations.

United Technologies Corp rose 4.3 percent after the industrial conglomerate reported a better-than-expected profit and forecast 2019 earnings above estimates, boosted by acquisition of aero parts maker Rockwell Collins.

Fellow industrial companies in the Dow, Boeing Co, Caterpillar Inc and 3M Co rose between 0.2 percent and 0.9 percent.

The gains follow Wall Street's more than 1 percent loss on Tuesday as worries about slowing global growth came to the fore after a gloomy economic outlook from the International Monetary Fund, signs of further cooling in China's economy and mixed reports on U.S.-China trade talks.

"Given a day like yesterday, a bounce driven by earnings is not unusual," said Michael Antonelli, managing director, institutional sales trading at Robert W. Baird in Milwaukee.

"UTX being an industrial company, is definitely something investors are looking at for hints on the impact of a global economic slowdown. The fact that it provided a strong forecast just shows the U.S. economy is actually solid," Antonelli said.

At 8:46 a.m. ET, Dow e-minis were up 159 points, or 0.65 percent. S&P 500 e-minis were up 10 points, or 0.38 percent and Nasdaq 100 e-minis were up 25.75 points, or 0.39 percent.

Despite the pullback on Tuesday, the benchmark S&P 500 index is about 10 percent away from its record closing high on Sept. 20 and has climbed about 5 percent this year.

Procter & Gamble Co rose 4.3 percent after its quarterly revenue beat Wall Street's expectation, driven by strong demand for beauty and fabric care products.

U.S. cable services provider Comcast Corp rose 2.6 percent after its quarterly revenue beat analysts' estimates, helped by lower-than-expected video subscriber losses.

Among the decliners were shares of Kimberly-Clark Corp, which fell 4.2 percent after the Kleenex-tissues maker's profit missed analysts' estimates due to rising raw materials costs and a strong U.S. dollar.

Abbott Laboratories dropped 2.4 percent after the healthcare company missed quarterly revenue estimate due to lower sales of generic drugs in emerging markets and gave a downbeat forecast for the current quarter.

Of the 61 S&P 500 companies that reported until Tuesday, 78.7 percent have beat Wall Street's profit estimates and that is above the historical average of 64 percent, according to Refinitiv data.

However, earnings growth estimates have dropped to 14.1 percent from 20.1 percent at the start of October.

(Reporting by Shreyashi Sanyal and additional reporting by Sruthi Shankar in Bengaluru; Editing by Arun Koyyur)