Retail giant JC Penney (NYSE: JCP) reported its first quarter numbers this morning, and reported that the current economic environment led to a pretty hefty 50% drop in its net income.

The company stated that the cut back in consumer spending was to blame for the drop in net income, and predicted that the tough times were far from over. In its earnings report, the company estimated that the difficult times could easily last for the remainder of the year.

Despite the 50% drop in income, and poor business outlook for the rest of the year, the stock is actually in the green today, as traders have pushed shares of the retailer up 1.7% to $45.01, up $0.76. The reason... the company was able to beat Wall Street estimates.

Shares of tire maker Goodyear Tire and Rubber (NYSE: GT) are trading up nicely in the premarket after the Akron, Ohio based company posted a profit of 60 cents a share for its first quarter, easily surpassing analyst estimates.

During its first quarter last year, the company posted a $174 million dollar loss, or -94 cents a share, and going into today's earnings report Wall Street had been looking to see the company show Q1 earnings of 47 cents. So with the actual numbers, Goodyear is looking for a good day in today's action. Excluding one-time items, the company stated that it had earned 67 cents per share.

Currently the stock has moved up 4.5% in premarket trading following its earnings release.

American auto maker Ford Motor Co. (NYSE: F) reported its first quarter earnings this morning, and surprised Wall Street by posting a profit during the quarter.

Going into today's earnings announcement, analysts had been expecting the company to show a loss of 16 cents per share, but the nation's second largest auto maker surprised everyone by earning $100 million, or 5 cents per share, during the quarter. This is a nice rebound from the same period last year when the struggling auto maker had a loss of $282 million, or 15 cents a share.

The good news is that the company had a great performance in its European and South American markets. The bad news is that car and truck sales slumped once again in the weak U.S. market, hurt by the current economic slowdown.

Shares of the online auction site eBay, Inc. (NASDAQ: EBAY) have been surging today after positive remarks from Banc of America Securities analyst Brian J. Pitz, who stated that the company is on track for a "solid" first quarter to the year.

Pitz made his remarks after analyzing the company's recent proprietary listings and conversion rate tracking data. As a result of his findings, Pitz gives the stock a price target of $38, and lifted his revenue forecast for the quarter from $2.03 billion up to $2.08 billion. This is slightly higher than the $2.06 billion that Wall Street is expecting to see, and as a result shares of the e-commerce giant have surged 5% today to $30.96, and hit a high earlier in the session up at $31.21.

eBay has been in the news a lot lately, but for the most part, it has not been positive. The company has been fighting off speculation that a seller's strike late last month that extended into the first week of March had had any material impact on the site's listing numbers. Some have argued that the strike led to a 13% drop in product listings, but eBay has adamantly denied any impact what-so-ever, and instead has insisted that a promotion that ran right before the strike had artificially inflated product listing numbers that were used to compute the strike's effectiveness.

There is a lot of talk swirling around Wall Street about the current economic slowdown, and just how hard it is going to hit businesses in the months ahead. But so for fast food giant McDonald's (NYSE: MCD), 2008 is looking pretty rosy.

After ending 2007 with a disappointing decline in same store sales, McDonald's has now shown two straight months of sales growth following today's announcement that it had a pretty impressive 11.7% jump in same-store sales during the month of February.

Its American sales saw an increase of 8.3%, while-same stores sales in Europe really took off, showing a jump of an amazing 15.4%. Last month, the company reported that January same-store sales rose by 5.7%.

Shares of Tiffany and Co. (NYSE: TIF) are trading up 4.6% in the premarket following this morning's third quarter earnings release.

The company reported earnings of 71 cents per share. As I had discussed last night in my earnings preview, analysts had only been expecting to see the jewelry and luxury goods retailer show earnings of 25 cents per share. Included in the company's figures were 48 cents per share related to the sale-leaseback of the company's Tokyo flagship store. Excluding that, profit was 23 cents.

The company posted an 18% jump in sales during the quarter, helped by 9% increase in same-store sales.

Looking ahead to the company's full year numbers, Tiffany boosted its outlook from $2.22 to $2.27 per share upwards to a range of $2.25 to $2.30 per share.

Shares are currently trading up $2.25 to $51.00.

[photo : hazydz]

Eliza Popescu is a financial writer for the online investment advisory service Investor's Observer.

Manufacturers of Sirius Radio (SIRI) receivers that previously had to stop production of several models because of signal emissions the violated FCC standards have resumed production of two models, the company said yesterday. The models were designed to allow users the capability to use receive FM radio as well as receiving the subscriber programming offered by Sirius. This brings over 90% of Sirius radio models back into production. XM has its own ongoing FCC concerns, noted below.

The news was met indifferently by investors and in late afternoon the stock is landing where it finished yesterday -- at $3.77 a share.
Michael Canfield is a private investor, a business and media writer, living in Seattle. He doesn't own stock in XM or Sirius.