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

• Aetna Inc. (NYSE: AET) net income rose on membership growth and a hike in premium rates.
• Altria Group Inc. (NYSE: MO) beat Q2 estimates, excluding charges related to its international cigarette unit.
• Arcelor Mittal (NYSE: MT) Q2 profit doubled on higher prices and it offered upbeat guidance.
• Comcast Corp. (NASDAQ: CMCSA) Q2 net income rose on higher rates but missed expectations.
• Corning Inc. (NYSE: GLW) earnings were in line with expectations, but revenue fell short.
• Exxon Mobil Corp. (NYSE: XOM) posted another record quarterly profit but Wall Street was looking for more.
• Garmin Ltd. (NASDAQ: GRMN) missed Q2 revenue estimates as fuel prices depressed growth.
• IAC/InterActive Corp. (NASDAQ: IACI) swung to a Q2 loss on a one time charge, but revenue rose.
• Kraft Foods Inc. (NYSE: KFT) beat Q2 earnings expectations on price hikes, and raised its guidance.
• McAfee Inc. (NYSE: MFE) reported healthy Q2 results and announced an acquisition.
• MetLife Inc. (NYSE: MET) missed earnings expectations and lowered its full-year guidance.
• Nucor Corp. (NYSE: NUE) reported record Q2 results and forecast a strong next quarter.
• Ryanair Holdings (NASDAQ: RYAAY) said Q1 profit tumbled on rising fuel prices and recession fears.
• Sirius Satellite Radio Inc. (NASDAQ: SIRI) said it expects a narrower Q2 loss ahead of the merger.
• Starbucks Corp. (NASDAQ: SBUX) swung to a Q3 loss on charges related to store closings.
• Valero Energy Corp. (NYSE: VLO) Q2 earnings fell 67% but still beat Wall Street estimates.
• Viacom Inc. (NYSE: VIA) posted better-than-expected earnings driven by Iron Man and Indiana Jones.

For more highlights from this week, see: General Motors, Motorola, Disney, Sony, Visa, CBS and others

Upcoming quarterly reports include Archer Daniels Midland (NYSE: ADM), Procter & Gamble (NYSE: PG), Jack-in-the-Box (NYSE: JBX), Cisco (NASDAQ: CSCO), News Corp. (NYSE: NWS), Whole Foods (NASDAQ: WFMI), Sprint Nextel (NYSE: S), Time Warner (NYSE: TWX), Freddie Mac (NYSE: FRE), and Blockbuster (NYSE: BBI).

Visit AOL Money & Finance for more earnings coverage.

This post is part of a series on some of the most memorable companies that have disappeared.

The original Montgomery Ward retail strategy focused on selling quality merchandise over long distances. Aaron Montgomery Ward had a vision of providing first-quality goods, at reasonable prices, to rural customers who might otherwise not have had such merchandise available to them. The first Montgomery Ward catalog appeared in 1872 as a single sheet of paper, listing 163 items for sale, with ordering instructions.

By 1883, the Montgomery Ward catalog, dubbed the "Wish Book," had grown to 240 pages and 10,000 items. It wasn't until 1896 that Montgomery Ward faced any serious competition in the mail order field. That was the year Richard W. Sears fielded his first catalog and the fierce competition between the two companies began. By 1904, Montgomery Ward was mailing as many as three million, four-pound catalogs to its loyal customers across the country. In 1908, the company opened a 1.25 million square foot distribution center and headquarters north of downtown Chicago.

In 1926, Montgomery Ward opened its first retail store in Plymouth, Indiana, while continuing to operate its catalog business. The company rebuffed a merger offer from Sears in 1930. All was well until the early 1950s when the automobile gave birth to suburbia, and Montgomery Ward held the city ground while its competitors moved out to the strip malls. By the mid 1960s, the company's catalog sales began to weaken and the company struggled into the 1970s after a merger with Container Corporation of America. In 1976, the company was acquired by Mobil Oil, and an aggressive restructuring buoyed the company. However, its catalog operations ceased in 1985, as its retail outlets underwent transformation from department stores to specialty stores. A leveraged buyout then took the company private in 1988.

MAJOR PAPERS:

• According to the Wall Street Journal (subscription required), citing people familiar with the matter, E*Trade Financial Corporation (NASDAQ: ETFC) and TD Ameritrade Holding Corporation (NASDAQ: AMTD) have been in serious merger discussions for weeks, but are still not close to a deal.
• Dubai World, a holding company for the Persian Gulf state, will purchase a 9.5% stake in MGM Mirage (NYSE: MGM), the Kirk Kerkorian controlled Las Vegas casino company, for $5B. The deal will also give Dubai World 50% ownership in CityCenter, MGM's most ambitious development project, reported the Wall Street Journal.
• The Wall Street Journal reported that almost 10 months after Google Inc (NASDAQ: GOOG) acquired YouTube for $1.65B, the video-sharing site is rolling out its first advertisements in the videos.
• The Financial Times (subscription required) reported that private equity firm WL Ross is looking to get involved in the subprime lending business, said the firm's owner, Wilbur Ross. WL Ross may look to acquire lenders, mortgage portfolios or even companies that service loans, Ross added.

OTHER PAPERS:

• The New York Times reported that Kazakhstan's government is threatening to suspend one of the world's largest oil projects, due to environmental damage it says the work is causing in the Caspian Sea. The consortium developing the field includes Eni, Exxon Mobil Corporation (NYSE: XOM), Royal Dutch Shell (NYSE: RDS.A), ConocoPhillips (NYSE: COP), and Total SA (NYSE: TOT).

MOST NOTEWORTHY: Wyeth (WYE), Luminent Mortgage Capital (LUM), CheckFree (CKFR), EOG Resources (EOG) and K-Swiss (KSWS) were today's noteworthy downgrades:

• Cowen downgraded Wyeth (NYSE: WYE) to Neutral from Outperform based on limited long-term limited visibility.

• JP Morgan downgraded shares of Luminent Mortgage (NYSE: LUM) to Underweight from Neutral citing difficult CMO and CDO market conditions.

• JP Morgan downgraded CheckFree (NASDAQ: CKFR) to Neutral from Overweight following the company's acquisition by FiServ (FISV).

• Matrix cut shares of EOG Resources (NYSE: EOG) to Sell from Buy to reflect lower natural gas prices and increasing costs.

• Matrix believes soft demand for athletic shoes is leading to declining sales for K-Swiss (NASDAQ: KSWS), and cut shares to Sell from Buy...

OTHER DOWNGRADES:

• JMP Securities downgraded CapitalSource (NYSE: CSE) to Outperform from Strong Buy.

• Oppenheimer has turned negative on oil and gas names for the near-term, as they now believe the downside risk exceeds upside potential; they cut shares of Apache Corp (NYSE; APA), BP PLC (NYSE: BP), ConocoPhillips (NYSE: COP), Chevron (NYSE: CVX) and ExxonMobil (NYSE: XOM), among others, to Neutral from Buy.

Analyst summaries provided by TheFlyOnTheWall.com (subscription required).

MAJOR PAPERS:

• Mohamed Abdulmohsin Al Kharafi & Sons WLL, a Kuwaiti-based firm led by the Al Kharafi family, recently bought 1.25 million shares of Krispy Kreme Doughnuts Inc (NYSE: KKD) and now owns 7.37, or 11.4% of Krispy Kreme, according to Barron's Online's "Inside Scoop" section.
• The board of Dow Jones & Company Inc (NYSE: DJ) is taking over talks on the company's future, reported the Wall Street Journal, which added in a different article that Brad Greenspan, the former CEO of MySpace says he will seek a non-controlling stake in Dow Jones through a $60-per-share Dutch auction.
• The Wall Street Journal reported that the London Exchange is discussing a possible merger with Italian stock exchange operator Borsa Italiana.

OTHER PAPERS:

• The Telegraph reported that state-run Russian gas company Gazprom (OTC: OGZPY) wants to nix an Exxon Mobil Corporation (NYSE: XOM)-led project to supply Russian gas to China.
• The Telegraph also reported that Vodafone Group plc (NYSE:VOD) will have to pay about $900 million to avoid having its stake in Verizon Wireless reduced by 1%, as joint venture partner Verizon Communications Inc (NYSE: VZ) has the right to increase its share to 56% from 55% if Vodafone does not pay the additional money.

MAJOR PAPERS:

• The Wall Street Journal reported that Alcoa Inc (NYSE: AA) said it won't raise its $27.62B bid for Alcan Inc (NYSE: AL), possibly opening the door for rivals such as BHP Billiton Limited (NYSE: BHP) and Rio Tinto plc (NYSE: RTP).
• The Wall Street Journal's "Heard on the Street" column reported that analysts and investors think there's more room for growth at Tiffany & Co (NYSE: TIF).
• The Financial Times reported that institutional investors are looking to oust a board member at Exxon Mobil Corporation (NYSE: XOM) due to his "inaction" on their climate change strategy.

OTHER PAPERS:

• The U.K. Times reported that HSBC Holdings (NYSE: HBC) is looking to expand into Colombia.
• The Economic Times reported that Wal-Mart Stores Inc (NYSE: WMT) may buy a stake in Indian logistics company Radhakrishna Foodland, citing the Indian company's founder.

ExxonMobil Corporation (NYSE:XOM) made headlines reporting an annual profit of $39.5 billion. So what?!

So what if a company capitalized at $440 billion earns less than 10% profit. Suppose you bought the entire company "lock, stock and barrel"; wouldn't you expect to make far greater than that? You would be taking on a massive amount of responsibility and risk! Currency risk, political risk (you go deal with Putin in Russia and Chavez in Venezuela, or worse in Iraq or Iran or Africa), workman's comp for oil derricks in the Gulf Coast and elsewhere, environmental risk, government regulation -- the list is endless.

When I invest, my anticipation is at least a 10% return. Who in the entire investment world would do this, unless of course you were buying bonds paying 5% to 7% without any work. The 70-year stock market average is about 10%.

There is nothing wrong with Exxon Mobil's profit, given its size. It would be sad if they could not make 10%, and consider that they only made this with very high oil prices! If the profits were so high and prospects so good, why isn't there a run on the stock?

Last week was another busy one for the earnings reports that we are covering. In the reader polls that accompanied the previews of the eight earnings reports, Blogging Stocks readers only agreed with analysts expectations on two of them: Sony Corp. (NYSE:SNE) and Exxon Mobil Corp. (NYSE:XOM). On the former, it seems like just about everyone expected Sony to fall short, despite the brouhaha over the PlayStation 3 during the holiday season. 58% of you voted correctly for it to miss expectations, almost a quarter (24%) thought it might meet expectations, but fewer than 100 votes were cast, so perhaps there was a general lack of enthusiasm about Sony.

43% of you may have been looking for more record profits from Exxon, as you voted for it to exceed expectations, yet 46%, maybe thinking about fallen oil prices, agreed with Wall Street that Exxon would only meet expectations. But as we have since seen, the quarter brought record profits once more for this oil giant.

Merck and Co. (NYSE:MRK) was another case where readers and analysts both predicted incorrectly. 68% of you voted for Merck to beat expectations, while 24% agreed with analysts. In the end, though, legal and restructuring costs dragged Merck down, which only 8% of you predicted.

Readers were optimistic about the other earnings reports last week: Google Inc. (NASDAQ:GOOG) 59% for beat; Starbucks Corp. (NASDAQ:SBUX) 64% for beat; Time Warner Inc. (NYSE:TWX) 73% to beat; Boeing Co. (NYSE:BA) 80% for beat; and Amazon.com Inc. (NASDAQ:AMZN) 48% to beat. Your optimism was founded with regards to Google, Boeing, and Amazon, which all beat expectations. Amazon's results weren't all that exciting, however, as expectations had been low. That lack of excitement appears to have been reflected in 25% of you who voted that Amazon would merely meet expectations and the 27% who predicted it would disappoint, as well as the fact that fewer than 100 of you cast votes for online retailer.

But congratulations to you, Blogging Stocks readers, for correctly predicting the results of more of last week's earnings reports than analysts did. Keep up the good work with impending reports from Cisco Systems Inc. (NYSE:CSCO), Walt Disney Co. (NYSE:DIS), Pepsico Inc. (NYSE:PEP), and others by letting us know what you're expecting.

Exxon Mobil (NYSE:XOM), the world's largest traded public company, is planning to release its fourth quarter 2006 earnings this Thursday morning. Will the company be able to produce another estimate-shattering quarter or will the past few months of falling oil prices take its toll on the company's numbers this time around?

As we all know, Exxon Mobil has put out some pretty amazing numbers over the past year, setting the No. 1 and No. 2 all-time quarterly profit records. Their fourth quarter 2005 report boasted a pretty amazing $10.71 billion in profits for the largest ever single quarter corporate profit! That is definitely a tough act to follow, but the company came close to that record back in October when they put up a profit report of $10.49 billion.

This time around things could be a little different for the oil giant as oil prices have been struggling to rebound from the sell-off it encountered the second half of last year. After peaking around $80 during the summer, oil closed 2006 right around $60 a barrel, and so far January has not exactly been a banner month for the precious crude. Oil was able to successfully use $50 as a support level and has since traded up to around $55, but we still have seen a 8% fall so far this year.

All eyes will be on Exxon Mobil this Thursday to see just how the impact of these falling prices are going to be felt by the oil companies when they start to parade their fourth quarter earnings.

Analysts are expecting to see Exxon Mobil come in with $1.51 per share on revenue of $100 billion. This suggests that the experts are looking for a 16% drop from third quarter results. But we all knew that the major oil companies were going to be posting lower numbers; the real question is how low they will come in, and if they can beat what the experts are expecting from them.

MOST NOTEWORTHY: Motorola (MOT), Nokia (NOK) and Dell (DELL) were the most notable companies downgraded today.

• Shares of Motorola Inc (NYSE: MOT) were downgraded by numerous firms following the company's disappointing guidance: Piper Jaffrey, to Market Perform from Outperform; CIBC, to Sector Perform from Outperformer; Bear Stearns, to Peer Perform from Outperform; Deutsche Bank, Oppenheimer, Citigroup, AG Edwards and Merrill Lynch all downgraded Motorola to Neutral from Buy.

• Nokia Corp (NYSE: NOK) was downgraded by Credit Suisse to Neutral from Outperform, expecting Nokia's fourth quarter to be weak given continued ASP and gross margin pressure; in addition, Credit Suisse recommends a "trading sell" on shares of Nokia.

• JP Morgan downgraded shares of Dell Inc (NASDAQ: DELL) to Underweight from Neutral as they believe not only that gross margins may disappoint in the coming quarters, but that the company is in the middle of facing greater competition in corporate PC sales.

OTHER DOWNGRADES:

• Citing valuation, Lehman Brothers downgraded Exxon Mobil (NYSE: XOM) to Equal-Weight from Overweight, as they now see higher upside elsewhere in the sector following the stock's strong 2006.

• Credit Suisse reinstated Intel Corp (NASDAQ: INTC) with an Underperform rating and $19 target, downgrading the stock from its previous Neutral rating; the firm said recent fundamental strength and cost improvements are largely priced into valuation and investors under-appreciate how competition is driving accelerated spending even as Intel loses share and the end market growth rate slows.

Analyst summaries provided by TheFlyOnTheWall.com (subscription required).

This post is written as part of AOL Money & Finance's Best & Worst 2006. Gas prices got you down? Vote for Lee Raymond as the most overpaid CEO.

Lee Raymond retired as CEO of ExxonMobil Corporation (NYSE:XOM) at the end of 2005, and in April it was announced that he had received one of the most generous retirement packages in history, nearly $400 million, including stock options and other perks, this at a time when Americans were paying record fuel prices and Exxon had made the biggest profit of any company ever -- $36 billion.

Exxon defends Raymond's compensation, pointing out that during the years he ran the company, Exxon became the largest oil company in the world, as well as one of the world's most powerful companies. The stock price soared 500 percent during that time.

Raymond began his career at Exxon as a research engineer after receiving his PhD in chemical engineering from the University of Minnesota in 1963. He worked his way up the proverbial ladder with innovative moves that cut costs and increased profits. He defended Exxon against environmentalists and human rights activists, while denying the viability of renewable energy sources and the human component of global warming.

He was president of Exxon in 1989 during the Exxon Valdez disaster, when the damaged tanker spilled an estimated 30 million gallons of crude oil off the Alaskan coast and devastated wildlife. As CEO he oversaw the merger of Exxon and Mobil -- gains from the merger showed that early predictions had underestimated the potential growth.

Exxon claims that his retirement is in accordance with its standard pension plan, based on his forty plus years of service and his salary at retirement, about $51 million.