Financially strong companies whose stocks are in the Barron’s 400 Index are still out-growing those in the S&P 500. But as this year’s first-quarter results roll in, it is increasingly evident that investors are being surprised in more ways than one.

The big picture has changed in that Barron’s 400 companies’ financial growth is outpacing the S&P 500 by narrower, though nevertheless consequential, margins. Here are how security analysts’ estimates stack up against actual results a year earlier.

One reason these figures are greatly diminished from, say, size months ago is that fears of drastically slowing U.S. economic growth flooded Wall Street—and is that a recession just over the horizon? In response to this negative atmosphere, analysts got out their cleavers and chopped predictions. Median estimates sank over the six months preceding the first quarter’s end.

Notice that the hatchets were wielded extra enthusiastically with Barron’s 400 companies. Presumably the analysts reasoned that companies with outsized growth in the past were more vulnerable to a sputtering U.S. economy.

Of course, predictions don’t always come true, as shown by the results companies already have posted. There are more of them than usual because this report was delayed by illness. Here are the year-over-year growth results of 162 Barron’s 400 companies and 216 in the S&P 500, comparing actuals to actuals.

These companies grew profit more—much more for the Barron’s 400—but revenue less than the broader comparison of first-quarter 2019 estimates to year-before actuals (see first table, above). We’ll have to wait to see whether remaining results lower the profit growth, raise the revenue growth, or both, or neither.

The sector-level perspective yields a couple of observations. First is the diminished growth in expected per-share profits for technology, even with decent revenue gains. Obviously, costs are predicted to grow faster than sales, a potential red flag for the second quarter. Second are the forecasted profit pullbacks in energy, indicating that the industry has recovered from its supply-glut recession and now is more predictably responsive to the price of oil.

The sector scorecard is not expected to change much from recent quarters. The Barron’s 400 is seen prevailing in growing both per-share profit and revenue in eight of ten sectors. And that’s with giving the S&P 500 a freebie win in telecommunications, which is a null sector in the Barron’s 400.

Similarly, size segmentation shows the Barron’s 400 expected to outgrow the S&P 500 in both mega-capitalization and large-cap stocks—the only two segments the indexes share. Once again, mega-cap companies are seen driving profit growth in both indexes. One worrisome sign is the expect declines in large-cap profit and revenue growth for the S&P 500.

Now, we wait for the remaining results to be posted. However they turn out, we can rely on the financially vigorous stocks in the Barron’s 400 to lead the way in growth.