Arkansas Companies Earnings Up a Robust 12% in 2016, Obama's Last Year in Office. Then in 2017, Trump's First Year in Office, These Same Arkansas Companies Earnings Declined By 18% in 2017 ......................................................................................

From a review of US SEC filings, there were 12 Companies headquartered in Arkansas with stock market caps of more than $1 bil recently.

These fine 12 Arkansas Cos posted Audited Gold-Standard US GAAP Total Pretax Income From Continuing Operations of $14.7 Bil in Fiscal Year Ended (FYE) 2017, Down a Huge 18% from their similar Total Pretax Income of $18.0 Bil in FYE 2016. 

This 18% Earnings Decline in 2017 was an earnings growth reversal.

In 2016 in Obama’s last year in office, these same 12 Arkansas Cos posted Audited Total Pretax Income From Continuing Operations of $18.0 Bil in FYE 2016, an Increase of 12% from their similar Total Pretax Income of $16.0 Bil in FYE 2015.

Nearly all Republicans, a high percentage of Independents and even many perceptive Democrats all agree as a starting point that for US capitalism to work properly, Companies must generate in the aggregate reasonably healthy profits.  This didn't happen for Arkansas Cos in 2017.

My Focus is on Pretax Income Rather Than on After-Tax Net Income Because Income Taxes are Simply a Transfer of Financial Wealth Between US Corporations and the US Federal, US State and Foreign Governments.  It Has Nothing Whatsoever to do with Company Operating Performance.

From a review of SEC filings, the chart below shows the Audited Gold-Standard US GAAP Pretax Income (Loss) From Continuing Operations for the Years Ended 2017, 2016 and 2015 for these 12 Arkansas Companies with stock market caps above $1 bil recently.

				Year	Year	Year
				2017	2016	2015
				Audited	Audited	Audited
				Net	Net	Net
				Income	Income	Income
				(Loss)	(Loss)	(Loss)
				From	From	From
Arkansas Companies	City	State	2017	Continuing	Continuing	Continuing
Stock Market Caps Above $1 Bil	HQs	HQs	FYE	Operations	Operations	Operations
				$ mils	$ mils	$ mils
Wal-Mart	Bentonville	AR	Jan 18	10,523	14,293	15,080
Tyson Foods	Springdale	AR	Sep 17	2,628	2,598	1,921
J B Hunt Transport Services	Lowell	AR	Dec 17	686	432	427
Bank OZK	Little Rock	AR	Dec 17	422	270	182
Murphy USA	El Dorado	AR	Dec 17	245	221	138
Dillard's Inc	Little Rock	AR	Jan 18	221	169	269
Home Bancshares Inc	Conway	AR	Dec 17	135	177	138
Simmons First National Corp	Pine Bluff	AR	Dec 17	93	97	74
ArcBest Corp	Fort Smith	AR	Dec 17	60	19	45
Acxiom Corp	Conway	AR	Mar 18	1	9	(20)
Uniti Group	Little Rock	AR	Dec 17	(9)	(0)	25
Murphy Oil Corp	El Dorado	AR	Dec 17	(311)	(274)	(2,256)
Total all 12 Arkansas Cos				14,694	18,011	16,023
Trump's First Year 2017
… Pretax Income % Decrease 2017 vs 2016				-18%
Obama's Last Year 2016
… Pretax Income % Increase 2016 vs 2015				12%