NEW YORK, Feb 3 (Reuters) - U.S. companies are on track to post earnings growth for the fourth quarter of 2020 and end a string of pandemic-fueled quarterly profit declines, after recent upbeat results from companies including Alphabet and Amazon.com, according to data from Refinitiv. As of Wednesday morning, S&P 500 earnings are expected to have risen 0.9% in the fourth quarter of 2020 from a year ago. The projection is based on results from 223 companies and estimates for the rest. (Reporting by Caroline Valetkevitch)