Find out which sector is the star performer in Singapore's 4Q earnings season

More firms beat market expectations.

According to CIMB, 4Q corporate profits finally had more companies beating expectations, after three quarters of more negative surprises.

The sector with the biggest number of outperformers was the commodity sector, with both plantation stocks and supply chain managers surprising positively.

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Banks also contributed a few overachievers (on stronger fee income). Other notables were City Development (higher development profits), Suntec (completed AEI) and Thai Beverage (effect of selling price hikes).

Capital goods also beat expectations but that was less impressive as it was driven by less operational reasons.

We started the year with commodities, capital goods and financials as overweights and transport and telcos as underweights. Plantations remain the highest conviction overweight sector after a rather impressive 4Q13.

Transport remains the clear underweight sector with an operational outlook that is hardly improving. 

For the other sectors, we have taken a more positive view and upgraded telcos (no more currency woes) and consumer (lower valuations, no earnings dampener). We have taken a more negative view on capital goods (less upstream spending) and gaming (frequent poor results).