Goldman Sachs (NYSE: GS), Lehman Bros. (NYSE: LEH), Morgan Stanley (NYSE: MS), and Bear Stearns (NYSE: BSC) are scheduled to report quarterly results this week. Unless you spent your Spring Break last week on Mars, you probably heard about the blow-up at Bear Stearns. But just in case, here's a quick look back at the most recent BloggingStocks coverage of Bear Stearns to bring you up to speed before tomorrow's Bear Stearns first-quarter report and whatever the coming week may bring:
- March 16: Will JPMorgan buy Bear Stearns for $2 billion?
- March 16: Which is worse: Moral hazard or credit collapse?
- March 16: Bear Stearns China investor gets ready to walk
- March 15: Is Lehman Brothers next?
- March 14: Dollar falls to record low vs euro on Bear Stearns, credit market woes
- March 14: How the Fed is putting itself at risk for Bear Stearns
- March 14: Bear Stearns conference call: 'Untrue rumors' fueled concern
- March 14: Bear Stearns: The horrors of an institutional panic
- March 14: Why does Bear Stearns need a government bailout?
- March 11: Cramer on BloggingStocks: Bear needs to play the Fuld card
- March 10: Greenberg scoffs at Bear liquidity crunch rumors
Bear Stearns missed earnings expectations in the past three quarters. When it reported fourth-quarter results back in December, the $6.90 per share loss was much, much deeper that the consensus forecast of analysts surveyed by Thomson Financial, and even farther from the $4.00 earnings per share in the same period of the previous year. For all of 2007, the company posted earnings of $1.48 per share, less that the $6.69 per share expected by analysts.
For the current quarter, analysts had forecast Bear Stearns to swing back to earnings of 90 cents per share. Looking forward, the earnings growth forecast for the next three to five years was 10%, which is less than the industry average. The consensus analysts' recommendation, perhaps not surprisingly, is to hold Bear Stearns.
Shares fell about 47.4% Friday to close at $30.00. The price hit a multi-year low of $26.85 in afternoon trading, well off the 52-week high of $159.36 last April.
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