Wall Street braced for a first-quarter slowdown. Instead, the S&P 500 delivered its strongest profit print in five years.

Yet, three stocks did almost all the lifting.

With 63% of the index reported, blended first-quarter earnings growth for the S&P 500 is tracking at 27.1% year-over-year, more than double the 13.1% pace analysts modeled at quarter-end, according to the latest FactSet’s Earnings Insights.

If that holds, it would mark the highest quarterly growth rate since fourth quarter of 2021 and extend the streak of double-digit profit growth to six consecutive quarters.

The catch is concentration. Alphabet Inc. (NASDAQ:GOOGL), Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMZN) and Meta Platforms, Inc. (NASDAQ:META) accounted for 71% of the net dollar-level increase in S&P 500 earnings in the past week alone.

Three Reports That Rewrote The Quarter

The surprises were historic.

Alphabet beat by 90% ($5.11 actual versus $2.68 expected). Amazon beat by 70% ($2.78 versus $1.63). Meta beat by 56% ($10.44 versus $6.67).

Each figure dwarfs the company’s own five-year average surprise rate of 12.4%, 29.3% and 4.3%, respectively.

“The positive EPS surprises reported by all three companies for Q1 exceeded their 5-year averages,” John Butters, senior earnings analyst at FactSet, said.

Communication Services earnings, which house Alphabet and Meta, swung from a projected 3.8% decline on March 31 ...