Here are some highlights from last week's earnings coverage from BloggingStocks:

• Adobe Systems Inc. (NASDAQ: ADBE) just beat low Q3 earnings estimates but revenue also declined.
• Best Buy Co. Inc. (NYSE: BBY) earnings fell short of estimates but revenue was better than expected.
• Cracker Barrel Old Country Store Inc. (NASDAQ: CBRL) posted better-than-expected Q4 earnings.
• Discover Financial Services (NYSE: DFS) posted a surprise Q3 profit but shares rose slightly on the news.
• Dress Barn Inc. (NASDAQ: DBRN) reported modest growth in both net income and revenue in Q4.
• FedEx Corp. (NYSE: FDX) said that its Q1 earnings and revenue dropped but its cash flow has improved.

Adobe Systems (NASDAQ: ADBE), a software company whose colleagues include Apple (NASDAQ: AAPL) and Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT), issued Q3 results on Tuesday. Revenues dropped over 20%. Adjusted income was 35 cents per share versus 50 cents per share in the year-ago quarter.

As can be seen, Adobe is still suffering from the economic downturn. Not only did sales decline on a year-over-year basis, but they also dropped sequentially.Thankfully, management was at least able to beat expectations by a penny, as indicated by data at Earnings.com. Adobe also did relatively okay with operational cash flow.

Analyst upgrades:

• Deutsche Bank upgraded Garmin (NASDAQ: GRMN) to Hold from Sell as it believes the company's second half of 2009 is tracking better than expected due to retailer restocking. Deutsche raised its target on shares to $33 from $15 but thinks Garmin's long-term trends remain unfavorable.
• Goldman upgraded Fortune Brands (NYSE: FO) to Buy from Neutral citing potential EPS improvement driven by the Home division. Fortune Brands price target to $49 from $45. Note that the firm downgraded General Mills to Neutral from Buy.
• Oppenheimer upgraded FPIC Insurance (NASDAQ: FPIC) to Outperform from Perform to reflect the company's acquisition of Advocate MD and management's commitment to share repurchases. The firm set a $49 price target on the stock.
• PPG Industries (NYSE: PPG) and Olin Corp. (NYSE: OLN) were upgraded to Neutral from Sell at UBS.
• Synovus (NYSE: SNV) was upgraded to Neutral from Underperform at BofA/Merrill.
• Take-Two (NASDAQ: TTWO) was upgraded to Overweight from Neutral at Piper Jaffray.

Memphis-based package delivery giant FedEx Corp. (NYSE: FDX) is generally seen as an indicator of the state of commerce in the U.S. Last week, not only did the Fed's Beige Book report suggest that the economy had stabilized over the summer, with signs of recovery in some districts, But FedEx also boosted its earnings guidance due to stronger-than-expected volume in its international priority-delivery service. So a question going in to FedEx's fiscal first-quarter report this week is whether the company is still a bellwether.

For the three months that ended in August, when FedEx opened distribution hubs in Chicago and Toledo and declared a quarterly dividend, analysts surveyed by Thomson Reuters are looking for it to report that earnings fell 60.2% from a year ago to $0.49 per share. That's also down 23.4% from the previous quarter, as well as less than the recently updated outlook. First quarter revenue is expected to be down 18.3% from a year ago to $8.2 billion.

While On2 Technologies (AMEX: ONT) has strong video compression solutions, the company failed to get much traction over the years (a key reason was the licensing fee structure). It's been especially painful for shareholders.

But today there was some good news: Google (NASDAQ: GOOG) agreed to purchase the company for $106.5 million in stock. On the news of the deal, On2's shares spiked 49% to $0.57.

Here are some highlights from this past week's earnings coverage from BloggingStocks:

• Adobe Systems Inc. (NASDAQ: ADBE) Q2 earnings were in line with expectations but sales beat.
• Best Buy Inc. (NYSE: BBY) beat earnings estimates for Q1, but on horrible metrics, sending shares lower.
• Carnival Corp. (NYSE: CCL) lower Q2 earnings beat expectations and previous guidance, boosting shares.
• CarMax Inc. (NYSE: KMX) Q1 profit and sales dropped, but still beat expectations, sending shares higher.
• Discover Financial Services (NYSE: DFS) posted a smaller-than-expected Q2 net loss and shares rose.

The father of the PDF document, Adobe Systems Inc. (NASDAQ: ADBE), is starting to push further into the web-based document creation business. That strategy puts it squarely in the cross-hairs of Google Inc. (NASDAQ: GOOG) and its excellent Google Docs product, as well as software giant Microsoft Corp. (NASDAQ: MSFT), which is set to release a major online component with Office 2010.

Adobe indicated that a fee-based version its new online initiatives would allow businesses to covert all kinds of documents to the de-facto PDF standard, as well as hold online meetings via Acrobat.com.

Adobe Systems (NASDAQ: ADBE) said it earned 35 cents per share on an adjusted basis in the second quarter in a press release issued after the bell on Tuesday. Was it enough? Well, not exactly. According to the earnings preview, the market was betting on Adobe to make just that amount. Yep, it's that whole confusing Wall Street thing. Meet expectations, and you don't really pass the test.

Meeting expectations in this climate should be considered cool, though. And let's not forget that the software company did okay on the revenue side. Sales came in at roughly $705 million. The market was expecting about $10 million less.

Adobe Systems Inc. (NASDAQ: ADBE), provider of Acrobat Reader, Photoshop, and other desktop publishing software, is scheduled to discuss its second-quarter 2009 results today in a conference call featuring CEO Shantanu Narayen and CFO Mark Garrett at 5:00 PM ET. You can catch the live webcast of the call on the company's website.

For the quarter in which the San Jose, Calif.-based software and services provider announced collaborations with Facebook, Texas Instruments, and Level 3 Communications, analysts polled by Thomson Reuters expect the cash-rich company to report earnings of $0.35 per share, down 30.0% from the same period of the previous year. Revenue for the quarter ended May 29 is expected to have fallen 21.6% to $695.1 million. These numbers are in line with Adobe's previous forecast. Adobe's earnings have beaten analysts' estimates in the past five quarters by a penny or three per share.

Investor attitude toward Adobes System's (NASDAQ: ADBE) shares resemble Wall Street's attitude toward crude oil: choppy current demand conditions, but who cares? What counts is what's likely to happen six to nine months out. And for that reason, ADBE is worth a review.

In general, analysts expect Adobe's 2009 revenue to fall roughly 15-20%, on soft Creative Solutions unit sales. Sales of Creative Suite 4 are running about 20% below CS3, primarily due to the recession. In particular, the recession in advertising has sapped any momentum for the first half of F2009.

The television, whether we like it or not, will continue to evolve into a delivery mechanism for more than just an antenna, cable connection, or satellite television. Yes, many of us have all the game consoles and even internet connections strung to those flat-screen televisions. In five years or so, that cable connection could be replaced by a WiFi antenna and your flat-panel could be a internet monitor more than anything.

Adobe Inc. (NASDAQ: ADBE) wants to make that happen sooner rather than later. It wants Flash -- the near-universal video and audio platform for the internet -- to become the standard on many sections of the home entertainment category. This includes televisions, DVD players, and game consoles.

Here are some highlights from this past week's earnings coverage from BloggingStocks:

• Adobe Systems Inc. (NASDAQ: ADBE) reported better-than-expected Q1 results due to cost cutting.
• Best Buy Inc. (NYSE: BBY) received several upgrades ahead of its Q4 report on the demise of Circuit City.
• Blockbuster Inc. (NYSE: BBI) crushed analyst's expectations for Q4 as same-store sales rose.
• China Direct Industries Inc. (NASDAQ: CDII) Q4 earnings prospects resulted in an analyst's dowgrade.
• Darden Restaurants Inc. (NYSE: DRI) posted better-than-expected Q3 earnings and lifted its 2009 guidance.
• Energy Conversion Devices Inc. (NASDAQ: ENER) was downgraded after it lowered its guidance.
• FedEx Corp. (NYSE: FDX) fell short of Q3 earnings and revenue expectations due to economic conditions.

This post was written by Minyanville contributor Fil Zucchi.
The one thing that does bother me is that most models now show a decrease of about 10% in research and development spending for this year and only a very modest increase next year. For a company like Adobe, R&D is their business and to watch them cut down on it to make bottom line numbers does not give me the warm and fuzzies.

As we noted earlier today, Adobe Systems Incorporated (NASDAQ: ADBE) was scheduled to report its first quarter earnings this afternoon following the market close, and the company put up earnings that beat Wall Street estimates by a penny.

In our earnings preview for Adobe, we saw that the company had been expected to show earnings for the quarter of $0.44 per share, and the actual earnings for the quarter were slightly better, with a reported $0.45 per share.

Adobe Systems (NASDAQ: ADBE) will get its chance to impress investors this afternoon when it reports its first quarter numbers following the market close.

Going into this afternoon's earnings release, the company is expected to show earnings of 44 cents per share for its quarter ending February 27. For the same period last year, the company reported that it had earned 48 cents per share, so we are looking at the company possibly seeing an 8.3% year over year earnings decline.