Continue reading Closing Bell: DJIA 11,000 Yo-Yo (AA, COP, PALM, MIPI, INTC, JPM)

Closing Bell: DJIA 11,000 Yo-Yo (AA, COP, PALM, MIPI, INTC, JPM) originally appeared on BloggingStocks on Tue, 13 Apr 2010 16:20:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Alcoa

Continue reading Alcoa posts surprising third quarter profit

Alcoa posts surprising third quarter profit originally appeared on BloggingStocks on Wed, 07 Oct 2009 18:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Continue reading Oil drops below $67

Oil drops below $67 originally appeared on BloggingStocks on Tue, 28 Jul 2009 18:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Continue reading Before the Bell: Will earnings season start with a whimper?

Before the Bell: Will earnings season start with a whimper? originally appeared on BloggingStocks on Tue, 07 Apr 2009 07:33:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

I've never used a motorcycle before in my life and don't know much about the vehicles, but I recognize that Harley-Davidson, Inc. (NYSE: HOG) is an American icon whose product represents an aspirational brand. Even so, the company and its stock finds itself on hard times. The company's latest earnings report is reflective of the current economic malaise.

The first paragraph of the Q2 release tells me almost all I need to know. Revenues declined almost 3% to $1.57 billion. Net profit on a dollar basis dropped sharply by 23%, coming in at $222.8 million. Diluted earnings per share decreased by nearly 17% to $0.95. These numbers are not good. Also, in terms of cash flow, cash was used to fund operations for the first six months of the fiscal year as opposed to being generated. Yet another negative.

As I write this, Harley-Davidson's stock is up well over 7%. Am I impressed? Not enough to buy. Undoubtedly some of this rise can be attributed to the retreat in oil futures. But do I believe the economy will now be nice to Harley-Davidson? Not yet. The company, like General Motors Corporation (NYSE: GM) and Ford Motor Company (NYSE: F), will still have a rough time selling things that require fuel to run. According to this article, Harley-Davidson did better than expected, but that's little comfort to me. You can make an argument that the stock is cheap, but at the very least, anyone interested in buying it (again, I'm not) better wait till the euphoric rally of the day has faded.

Disclosure: I don't own any company mentioned; positions can change at any time.

Harley-Davidson rallies on Q2 earnings, but I'm not taking the ride originally appeared on BloggingStocks on Thu, 17 Jul 2008 15:05:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Classic blue-chip tech company IBM (NYSE: IBM), whose colleagues include Dell (NASDAQ: DELL), Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) and Hewlett-Packard (NYSE: HPQ), is due to report earnings on Thursday after the market closes up shop. What are investors looking for? Growth, of course. Should they expect it?

Well, according to Trey Thoelcke's earnings data, Wall Street is looking for IBM to deliver earnings per share around the $1.82 mark for the second quarter. Revenues should be near $25.9 billion. If Big Blue hits both of these numbers, it would show that the company is coming along fine and that the current level of the stock price is justified. Of course, Wall Street doesn't want IBM to merely hit those numbers. Oh no, that would be too easy. Wall Street wants IBM to beat those expectations. In terms of the bottom line, there is positive recent history for an earnings beat. The company handily beat estimates in the last two quarters, and met expectations in the two quarters previous to that time frame.

Will the company beat expectations? I think it will. The momentum seems to be favorable for such an outcome. In fact, in a relative sense, the stock isn't signaling a terrible report by any stretch of the imagination. The 52-week low is $97.04 and the 52-week high is $129.99. IBM closed up on Wednesday over 2% to a share price of $125.94. Doesn't sound like the market is worried, does it?

Continue reading Earnings preview: Can IBM beat the Street?

Earnings preview: Can IBM beat the Street? originally appeared on BloggingStocks on Thu, 17 Jul 2008 09:35:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Update July 7, 2008: Aluminum giant Alcoa Inc. (NYSE: AA) will post second quarter 2008 results after the close on Tuesday, July 8. Read our preview.

Continue reading Alcoa Q4 earnings preview

Alcoa Q4 earnings preview originally appeared on BloggingStocks on Fri, 04 Jan 2008 19:43:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Ted Allrich is the founder of The Online Investor and author of the just released book: Comfort Zone Investing: Build Wealth And Sleep Well At Night. In this weekly column, he'll offer advice to investors who are just getting started.

Earnings are released this week and for the next several. Investors will be scouring the headlines, looking for their stocks' results. Here are some things to check.

Earnings: They're the first number every investor wants to see. But just seeing the earnings per share (eps) isn't enough. You want to know how those earnings were achieved. The ideal: eps grew because more widgets were sold or more hours were billed or more of whatever the company sells is being sold. That's in contrast to eps increasing because of asset sales or a division being sold or some other extraordinary event. Those will only happen one time and won't continue to increase earnings in the future. You'd like to see earnings growing faster than revenues. It shows better efficiencies at the company and suggests future growth will be as profitable or more so because of these efficiencies.

Continue reading Comfort Zone Investing: What to look for in earnings season

Comfort Zone Investing: What to look for in earnings season originally appeared on BloggingStocks on Sat, 13 Oct 2007 10:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Just call it the "half a loaf is better than none" or "the glass is half-full" earnings quarter, or... well you get the point.

Wall Streets' analysts expect earnings growth from S & P 500 companies to slow in the second quarter, but that doesn't mean that there won't be stand-out sectors.

For example, energy companies are expected to benefit from elevated oil prices, barely-adequate gasoline refinery capacity, and solid demand for petroleum-based products.

Also, the industrial and technology sectors are expected to fair well: the industrials boosted by continued strong global growth, the techs aided by corporate information technology spending.

On the downside, likely to post sub-par earnings results include the auto and housing companies: U.S. automakers are battling operational restructuring and a slowdown in consumer spending, while the housing sector continues to correct, due to a large supply of unsold homes, rising interest rates, and subprime loan defaults.

Market-wide, analysts expect S & P 500 companies to post Q2 year-over-year earnings growth of 4.4%, according to Thomson Financial. If that sounds like a modest slowdown compared to the double-digit earnings growth prior to 2007, you're right, and Wall Street has, accordingly, "lowered the earnings expectations bar" for this quarter. Hence, in general, companies that fail to exceed analysts' earnings estimates by 10% are not likely to face as harsh a treatment by investors as they would in quarters past, when the earnings expectations bar was higher.

Still, given the strong correlation between earnings growth and stock prices, lowered expecations or not, this quarter's earnings performance will provide investors with a telling data point regarding whether there's fundamental evidence to drive stock prices higher, and by extension, to continue the market's bull run of 2007.

Q2 earnings season: modest expectations for S & P 500 companies originally appeared on BloggingStocks on Tue, 10 Jul 2007 02:15:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Nike

Nike's profit sprints higher originally appeared on BloggingStocks on Wed, 27 Jun 2007 10:48:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Earnings preview: Can Nike keep its lead ahead of the pack? originally appeared on BloggingStocks on Mon, 25 Jun 2007 15:20:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Continue reading A brand-new bag: Coach reports earnings

A brand-new bag: Coach reports earnings originally appeared on BloggingStocks on Tue, 24 Apr 2007 12:01:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Quarterly reports continue to roll out, as we're in the thick of earnings season. This past week we asked you, Blogging Stocks readers, for your expectations ahead of earnings reports from some of our favorites -- namely, eBay Inc. (NASDAQ:EBAY), McDonald's Corp. (NYSE:MCD), Johnson & Johnson (NYSE:JNJ), Advanced Micro Devices Inc.(NYSE:AMD), Sun Microsystems Inc. (NASDAQ:SUNW), Yahoo! Inc. (NASDAQ:YHOO), AT&T Inc. (NYSE:T), Ford Motor Co. (NYSE:F), and Microsoft Corp. (NASDAQ:MSFT).

So how did readers do at predicting earnings when compared to Wall Street? It looks like a tie to me, seven out of nine predicted correctly in each case. Let's look a little closer at what you expected.

You had little doubt that several of these stocks would beat expectations: EBAY (70% for beat), MCD (72%), SUNW (72%), T (73%), and even JNJ (59% for beat, against 39% for meet). You correctly picked MSFT to beat expectations as well, but with a bit more uncertainty -- 45% picked beat, against 40% just to meet. And while YHOO beat analysts' expectations, too, only 34% of you thought it would; 39% picked meet.

Ford was one of our favorite underdogs in the Best & Worst of 2006. Perhaps such sentiment played a part in why you were nearly split three ways on Ford in this poll, with 35% to beat, 34% to meet, and 31% to miss expectations. Unfortunately, despite your optimism Ford fell spectacularly short.

Poll results were fairly close on AMD as well, perhaps because of AMD's ongoing rivalry with Intel Corp.(NASDAQ:INTC) -- 26% of you picked it to beat, 32% to meet, and 42% to miss expectations. Despite Wall Street's low expectations, AMD fell short, as the largest portion of you predicted. Congratulations.

Upcoming earnings reports include Sony, Google, Starbucks, and Time Warner. Check out these and other earnings reports that we're following, and let us know what you're expecting.

Earnings: Readers vs. Wall Street on eBay, Yahoo!, Ford, and others originally appeared on BloggingStocks on Sun, 28 Jan 2007 10:05:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.