The week in preview: More earnings crunch expectations

Posted Jul 20th 2008 12:30PM by Trey Thoelcke
Filed under: Earnings Reports, Forecasts

Was the optimism observed in last week's preview post rewarded? Well, as it turned out there were few negative surprises from the companies listed there, really just Advanced Micro Devices Inc. (NYSE: AMD) and narrow misses from Google Inc. (NASDAQ: GOOG) and Microsoft Corp. (NASDAQ: MSFT).

Again this week, in a list of earnings expectations for some prominent companies in a variety of sectors, we see an apparent optimism. That is, analysts are anticipating more earnings growth than earnings declines.

Analysts surveyed by Thomson Financial expect the following companies to report a rise in earnings when compared to the same period of the previous year.

Newmont Mining Corp. (NYSE: NEM): $0.48 EPS (50.0%) on sales of $1.5 billion (+15.7%)
Amazon.com Inc. (NASDAQ: AMZN): $0.26 EPS (26.9%) on sales of $4.0 billion (+37.1%)
Caterpillar Inc. (NYSE: CAT): $1.54 EPS (19.5%) on sales of $12.7 billion (+11.7%)
McDonald's Corp. (NYSE: MCD): $0.86 EPS (17.4%) on sales of $5.9 billion (-1.5%)
ConocoPhillips (NYSE: COP): $3.41 EPS (15.0%) on sales of $198.6 billion (+319.3%)
Apple Inc. (NASDAQ: AAPL): $1.08 EPS (14.8%) on sales of $7.4 billion (+36.0%)
Halliburton Co. (NYSE: HAL): $0.68 EPS (11.8%) on sales of $4.3 billion (+13.7%)
Texas Instruments Inc. (NYSE: TXN): $0.46 EPS (8.7%) on sales of $3.4 billion (-1.1%)
Yahoo Inc. (NASDAQ: YHOO): $0.12 EPS (8.3%) on sales of $1.4 billion (+10.5%)
AT&T Inc. (NYSE: T): $0.76 EPS (7.9%) on sales of $31.2 billion (+5.7%)
PepsiCo Inc. (NYSE: PEP): $1.02 EPS (7.8%) on sales of $10.5 billion (+9.4%)
Anheuser-Busch Companies Inc. (NYSE: BUD): $0.93 EPS (6.5%) on sales of $4.7 billion (+4.2%)
Pfizer Inc. (NYSE: PFE): $0.54 EPS (22.2%) on sales of $11.5 billion (+3.5%)
3M Co. (NYSE: MMM): $1.35 EPS (8.9%) on sales of $6.7 billion (+9.0%)
Merck & Co. (NYSE: MRK): $0.83 EPS (1.2%) on sales of $6.0 billion (-1.2%)

These two companies are expected to report earnings that are the same as in the year-ago period:

Kimberly Clark Corp. (NYSE: KMB): $1.04 EPS on sales of $5.0 billion (+10.4%)
Qualcomm Inc. (NASDAQ: QCOM): $0.55 EPS on sales of $2.7 billion (+16.5%)

The following companies are expected to post a decline in profits.

Bank of America Corp. (NYSE: BAC): $0.53 EPS (58.6%) on sales of $18.4 billion (+3.6%)
Southwest Airlines Co. (NASDAQ: LUV): $0.12 EPS (52.0%) on sales of $2.9 billion (+10.7%)
Hershey Co. (NYSE: HSY): $0.28 EPS (20.0%) on sales of $1.1 billion (+2.7%)
United Parcel Service Inc. (NYSE: UPS): $0.85 EPS (18.3%) on sales of $12.8 billion (+5.1%)
Dow Chemical Co. (NYSE: DOW): $0.85 EPS (10.9%) on sales of $14.9 billion (+12.3%)
Boeing Co. (NYSE: BA): $1.33 EPS (1.5%) on sales of $17.2 billion (+1.2%)

While Washington Mutual Inc. (NYSE: WM) is expected to swing to a loss to $1.03 per share (from $0.92 EPS a year ago) on sales of $3.6 billion (down 5.1%), Wall Street is looking for Pulte Homes Inc. (NYSE: PHM) to narrow its loss to $0.66 per share (from $2.01 last year) on sales of $1.6 billion (down 23.0%).

Other economic data coming out next week include: