Business executives are taking a more tempered view when it comes to expectations for profit, revenue and expansion in the coming year, according to the first quarter AICPA Economic Outlook Survey, which polls chief executive officers, chief financial officers, controllers and other certified public accountants in U.S. companies who hold executive and senior management accounting roles.

Optimism about those key performance indicators still remains high, but there has been a retrenchment in sentiment since last quarter, the survey found.  The last time a similar pullback occurred in these areas was the end of 2012. At the same time, businesses executives grew slightly more upbeat about prospects for the U.S. economy.

“It’s important to note that we’re seeing higher optimism on most business indicators we track than we did a year ago,” said Arleen R. Thomas, CPA, CGMA, AICPA’s senior vice president of management accounting and global markets. “But it’s also clear we’re seeing a reset this quarter on expectations for several key categories, and that’s something to be mindful of going forward,”

The AICPA survey is a forward-looking indicator that tracks hiring and business-related expectations for the next 12 months. As a point of comparison, the U.S. Department of Labor’s February employment report, scheduled to be released tomorrow, looks back on the previous month’s hiring trends.

The CPA Outlook Index—a comprehensive gauge of executive sentiment within the AICPA survey— fell four points in the first quarter to 74, the first time it’s dropped since the fourth quarter of 2012. The index is a composite of nine, equally weighted survey measures set on a scale of 0 to 100, with 50 considered neutral and greater numbers signifying positive sentiment.

The first quarter AICPA Business and Industry Economic Outlook Survey was conducted Feb. 10-26, 2015, and included 848 qualified responses from CPAs who hold leadership positions, such as chief financial officer or controller, in their companies. The overall margin of error is less than 3 percentage points.