Craigs Investment Partners broker Peter McIntyre said more importantly, earnings growth expectations for the year ahead improved from 7.8% the previous month to 8.5%.
The reporting season kicked off in late July and largely concluded about 10 days ago, with only retailers Briscoes, Kathmandu and Hallenstein yet to report, plus Fonterra; during the week before the election.
"Strong share price gains over the first half of the year had set the bar quite high for the reporting season, and in most respects, corporate New Zealand delivered," Mr McIntyre said.
He said most companies had met or exceeded expectations, while growth forecasts for the coming financial year were upgraded slightly.
"As a result, the market held its own despite some high valuations and lofty expectations.
"As always, there were some hits and misses at a company-specific level," he said.
A2 Milk and Comvita were two companies which stood out at the positive end of the scale.
"Both saw analyst estimates for their 2018 earnings upgraded substantially, with A2 again blowing expectations out of the water and Comvita beginning to recover from the issues of last year," he said.
Both booked big share price gains during August as the market gave its approval, Mr McIntyre said. A2 Milk gained more than 130% on a year ago and hit a record high $5.57 following the result.
Other notable positives were Summerset, Scales, Air New Zealand and Tourism Holdings.
"These four saw healthy upgrades to future earnings estimates on the back of strong results, with the last two clear beneficiaries of very solid visitor numbers," he said.
Although one division of Fletcher Building posted a $292million loss, largely from its contracts to build the Christchurch justice precinct and Auckland convention centre, its share price had since rallied, from $8.20 to $8.50.
Fletcher’s group profit plunged almost 80%, to $94million.
However, Mr McIntyre said the poorer result had been well signalled to the market by Fletcher and did not come as a huge surprise, and most analysts had the stock price target above $9.
With confirmation of the "bad news" behind it over the two projects, Mr McIntyre said investors now expected it to "garner plenty of profit" from its biggest ever order book during the next two years.
Mr McIntyre said market operator NZX posted one of its better results in recent years, and was hopefully set for a period of improved performance under fresh leadership.
He said there was a theme of ‘‘disruption" running through the market during August. Sky TV and Trade Me were two of the weaker performers, albeit not too bad.
"However, there’s increasing uncertainty on what the likes of Netflix, Amazon and Facebook will mean for their businesses in the coming years," Mr McIntyre said.
The electricity companies were all "quite solid" as should be expected.
"Contact Energy was the pick of the bunch for many, with some long-awaited changes to dividend policy a boon for shareholders," Mr McIntyre said.
There were "very respectable" results from traditionally reliable performers Auckland Airport, Ebos and Port of Tauranga, he said.
At the "other extreme", Metro Performance Glass was the worst performer in the NZX50 index.
"The company didn’t report a result, although the annual meeting trading update was poor," he said.
Metro was a company unable to capitalise on the strong construction backdrop of recent years, Mr McIntyre said.
"Amongst the larger companies, Sky City and Chorus also came out on the wrong side of the ledger."
New Zealand’s only casino operator continued its recent tradition of missing expectations and disappointing investors, while Chorus had proved "not quite the predictable utility" which shareholders were hoping for.
