Profits are proliferating at these nine companies

Tech, commodities lead way as investors look for confidence

Corporate profits are looking better than they have in some time. But a few companies are about to show how they’re stacking up the earnings gains.

There are nine companies in the Standard & Poor’s 500 — including online retailer Amazon .com, mining and oil and gas exploration company FreeportMcMoRan and computer graphics hardware maker Nvidia — expected to have increased their adjusted profit in 2016 by 70% or more, based on a USA TODAY analysis of data from S&P Global Market Intelligence.

Seeing such massive jumps in corporate profits is critical since investors are looking to justify the rising stock prices they’re paying. Companies are starting to report their fourth-quarter and 2016 earnings results.

Earnings in the Standard & Poor’s 500 index as a whole are expected to rise 4.3% during the fourth quarter, marking the second consecutive period of higher profits, S&P Global says.

The S&P 500 index is up nearly 21% over the past year as investors price in higher corporate profit growth on changes expected to be made by the incoming Donald Trump administration.

One of the biggest profit gainers last year is likely to be the one with a CEO (Jeff Bezos) that has tangled publicly with Trump. Amazon.com has been the biggest winner, by far, of the profit explosion in the digital era. The company is expected to deliver adjusted quarterly profit for 2016 of $4.79 a share, which is nearly four times greater than its profit in 2015, S&P Global data show.

It’s hardly a surprise to investors, who have pushed shares of the company up 41% over the past 12 months. The company’s