WWW - Posts tagged Corporate Earnings at BloggingStocks

corporate earnings posts

Serious Money: It's earnings season and all dollars are not created equally

Posted Jul 18th 2007 6:10PM by Sheldon Liber (RSS feed)
Filed under: Earnings Reports, Management, Rants and Raves, Economic Data, Serious Money

When is a dollar not a dollar? Did you ever hear someone refer to "quality of earnings"? Why do they say that? Is there a such thing as earnings that lack quality? Actually from an investment perspective there is.

I have given this a lot of thought, but most often in terms of real estate. Sometimes properties that are being prepared for sale have a lot of cosmetic improvements made while important maintenance and operational activities are suspended to show increased profit. History has shown us that it is not uncommon for companies to 'dress up' quarterly reports in the same manner. That is why smart real estate investors always want to see expense records for several years. The following was found on Investopedia.com:(http://www.investopedia.com/terms/q/qualityofearnings.asp)

Quality earnings are the amount of earnings attributable to higher sales or lower costs rather than artificial profits created by accounting anomalies such as inflation of inventory.
Quality of earnings is considered poor during times of high inflation. Also, earnings that are calculated conservatively are considered to have higher quality than those calculated by aggressive accounting policies

Continue reading Serious Money: It's earnings season and all dollars are not created equally

Q2 earnings season: modest expectations for S & P 500 companies

Posted Jul 10th 2007 2:15AM by Joseph Lazzaro (RSS feed)
Filed under: Earnings Reports, Analyst Reports, Forecasts, Other Issues, Indices

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.

The way I see it: Market risks outweigh the upside

Posted May 18th 2006 9:47AM by Peter Cohan (RSS feed)
Filed under: Major Movement, Forecasts, Blogs, Google (GOOG), Microsoft (MSFT), Yahoo! (YHOO), Apple Inc (AAPL), eBay (EBAY), General Electric (GE), Time Warner (TWX), Wal-Mart (WMT)

The Dow Jones Industrials have lost 437 points in the last week. Last Sunday, after the Dow had lost 262 points, my post at The Informed Observer revealed my thoughts on what would happen next and why.

When I read Amey Stone's interview yesterday afternoon with Joe "Uber Bull" Battipaglia, I thought it might be interesting to offer another perspective. Even though the Dow is tumbling and we could be in for some rough sledding, I am reminded of the advice I gave a friend after September 11: If you can afford not to sell your stocks, the market will probably recover in the long run. Therefore, it is better to avoid the transaction costs and possible taxes of getting out and then getting back in; grit your teeth, and hold on.

Yesterday's official Consumer Price Index (CPI) report triggered investor fears that the Fed was unlikely to take its foot off of the interest rate brake pedal. In my view, this represents a potential first crisis for the new Fed Chair. Here's my view of the balance of economic downsides and upsides facing Ben Bernanke:

Continue reading The way I see it: Market risks outweigh the upside

< Previous Page