Communication Services is currently commanding the highest expectations across the S&P 500, boasting a mean consensus upside of 31.9%. In sharp contrast, the Utilities sector sits at the bottom of our index coverage, offering a significantly more modest 5.2% upside potential. That 26.7-point spread highlights a substantial divergence in how analysts are currently positioning their outlooks for growth versus defensive stability.
* The broad market average for the 275 companies tracked currently sits at 15.6% upside. * Communication Services owes much of its top-tier status to Charter Communications (CHTR), which leads the group with a staggering 79% individual upside potential. * Data refreshed as of 2026-06-28T00:07:53.100Z confirms that while growth-oriented sectors are pushing higher, defensive sectors remain tethered to tighter valuation ranges.
Consensus upside by sector
When examining the hierarchy of analyst sentiment, the gap between the top performers and the rest of the pack is telling. Communication Services holds the crown at 31.9%, followed by Energy at 22.8% and IT at 20.9%. Materials and Healthcare round out the top five, clocking in at 20.1% and 18.7%, respectively. It is useful to observe that even the fifth-ranked sector, Healthcare, remains comfortably above the 15.6% overall market average.
Conversely, the bottom of the list reveals a cluster of sectors where analyst expectations are considerably more muted. Utilities brings up the rear with a 5.2% upside, sharing the bottom tier with Consumer Staples and Real Estate, both of which are also struggling to move past the 8.3% mark. These figures are strictly derived from current analyst price targets and remain subject to daily revisions; they represent a snapshot of opinion rather than a projection of guaranteed performance. Investors interested in the deeper components of these shifts can review the full Communication Services sector page to understand the weightings driving these averages.
Leaders and laggards
Digging into the specific tickers within these groups reveals why the averages look the way they do. Within the high-flying Communication Services cohort, CHTR is clearly the outlier, pushing the sector average significantly higher than its peers. Similarly, the IT sector—which sits third overall with 20.9%—is anchored by a massive 81.8% upside estimate for Intuit (INTU). This suggests that analysts are betting heavily on specific, high-conviction names to drive the broader sector narrative.
The situation is quite different at the bottom of the index. In the Utilities sector, Pacific Gas & Electric (PCG) represents the top pick with a 30% upside, which actually stands in stark contrast to the sector's collective 5.2% average. This tells us that while the sector average is suppressed, there are pockets of individual upside that deviate sharply from the group trend. Meanwhile, Industrials continues to show a more restrained outlook, with an average of 9.9% and Northrop Grumman (NOC) leading its cohort at 39%.
Ultimately, this data set captures a moment in time where the market is pricing in a wide variance in future performance. While Communication Services and IT reflect a more aggressive growth posture, the lower averages in Utilities and Consumer Staples suggest that analyst sentiment remains defensive for those areas. These discrepancies are not merely statistical noise; they reflect the ongoing re-evaluation of valuation models as macroeconomic variables shift the floor for bottom-line projections.