Company profits are down but still not the horror story expected due to a spate of under-promising and over-delivering in the profit-reporting season.

Total reported full-year profits for the year to June 30 are $42.2 billion with three days of the profit reporting season to go, CommSec has found.

That total, for the 114 ASX200 companies to report to date, is down 22.9 per cent on a year earlier.

Despite the fall, CommSec chief economist Craig James said 98 of those companies still made a profit last financial year and that when big profit slides such as BHP Billiton’s 35 per cent decline are taken out, the total for full year profits is down only 20.2 per cent.

A widely expected run of horror results had failed to materialise.

“In the end there were a few scares, but the profit-reporting season failed to live up to some of the doom and gloom predictions,” Mr James said.

“Perhaps that is because companies under-promised and over-delivered.

“Perhaps it reflects the depressive sentiment of the environment that isn’t lining up against the reality.”

Mr James said Australian companies had managed a “resilient” performance, considering the challenges to business including weak consumer sentiment, falling house prices, a strong Australian dollar and growth worries over the US and Chinese economies.

Mr James said the profit results matched anecdotal evidence that companies were “still making money but they had to work harder to get it”.

The 114 companies surveyed – all of which reported by August 28 – achieved total sales of $543 billion, up just 2.3 per cent on the previous year, while cost of sales was $438.7 billion in total – up by 7.1 per cent.

Aggregate earnings per share were down by 14.6 per cent while dividends lifted by 7.5 per cent.