The shares of Domino's Pizza (NYSE: DPZ) gapped sharply lower this morning, despite a stronger-than-expected third-quarter profit. Ahead of the bell, Domino's reported net income of $17.8 million, or 31 cents per share, for the quarter ended Sept. 6. Excluding a $14.3 million pretax gain, Domino's profit of 17 cents per share was two cents better than analysts expected.

However, revenue for the period tumbled 6.5% to $302.7 million, falling well short of consensus estimates for $308.9 million. Same-restaurant sales were flat in the U.S., although they were up 2.7% internationally. With top-line results softer than expected, the pizza chain cited lower interest expense and tighter cost controls for the robust bottom-line results.

We've seen a large percentage of companies reporting better-than-expected earnings. However, the earnings reports were not always compared to last year.

There is yet another factor, actually the most important factor that generates profits, and that key factor is sales. Without sales, the bottom line (net profit) remains stagnant.

Companies have slashed payrolls and expenses and that increased the bottom line for a time. However after all of this is over, the bottom line doesn't improve until sales improve.

The shares of Regions Financial Corporation (NYSE: RF) surged this afternoon after the regional bank said it expects to report a first-quarter profit. In a regulatory filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), Chairman and CEO Dowd Ritter attributed the unexpectedly profitable quarter to recent strength in new account openings and customer deposit growth.

If Wall Street seems shocked by the news, it's because analysts were predicting Regions to swallow a quarterly loss of about $290 million, or 42 cents per share, according to Thomson Reuters. Plus, with nearly 5% of the equity's float sold short, it seems that many investors were also betting on the bank to report gloomy earnings.

Shares of Adobe Systems Inc. (NASDAQ: ADBE) are trading slightly higher in today's premarket action, following yesterday evening's fourth-quarter earnings release. The company posted a pretty strong quarter, but investors have displayed some concerns over the company's 2008 outlook, which was left unchanged.

The company reported a growth of 21% for its quarterly profit, which rose up to $222.2 million, or 38 cents a share, following strong sales of its design software. Back a year ago, Adobe had posted a profit of $183.2 million, or 30 cents a share, in the same period.

Included in the company's figures were certain costs related to stock-based compensation and restructuring charges. Excluding that, the company''s profit was 49 cents per share. Analysts had been expecting to see the Adobe show earnings of 37 cents per share.

If you take a look at revenues, you see a very respectable jump of 34% in the quarter, helped by increased sales of software for photo editing, building Web sites and creating graphics. The maker of Photoshop, Flash and Illustrator software posted record sales of $911.2 million, easily beating analysts' expectations for sales of $887.33 million.

Shares of Sears Holding Corp. (NYSE: SHLD) have been taking a beating in today's action after a dismal third quarter earnings report this morning. At one point shares had dipped as much as 16%, but with an hour left to go in the session shares have moved slightly higher, only showing a 12% drop as shares are trading down $14 to $101.56.

If you ask me, the stock is doing better than it probably should, considering just how poor this morning's report was. Analysts had been expecting to see the retailer show net income of 53 cents per share for its third quarter. The actual net income? ONE PENNY! It is not often that you see such a miss.

During 2007 the company showed earnings of 80 cents for its third quarter, and today's report represents the largest year over year drop in income since Sears and K-Mart merged back in 2005, and the first consecutive quarter earnings decline.

This post is part of our Hottest Products of 2007 feature. Check out our other Hottest Products of 2007 posts and let us know which product you think is the greatest thing since sliced bread.

If you find life a little boring, stifling and basically bland, then you may be a prime candidate to check out one of this year's hottest properties. Second Life is for people who wish to expand the boundaries of their life experience. Second Life opens up opportunities (albeit virtual ones) that most people would never encounter in their own personal daily grind. Much of the "news" that surfaces in mainstream media regarding Second Life is just dicey, sensationalist spin. What we want to know about are the things that make Linden Lab's Second Life worthy for consideration as a product of the year.

A good place to start investigating is Second Life Insider, a blog dedicated to tracking that constantly changing virtual environment. For instance, did you know that Second Life has an economy of its own, which actually maintains an exchange rate against real American dollars? It's true, and according to Second Life Insider, on November 1, Second Life membership invested U.S. $1,372,000 into Linden dollars (the site's virtual currency) at an exchange rate of L$268.7 to one U.S. dollar. In fact, there was quite a moan put out by the IRS at the beginning of this year when they again realized that people do generate significant income in virtual spaces.

I'm placing this blog post squarely at the feet of George Soros. The first reason I'm doing that is because I can. The second reason I'm doing it is because Mr. Soros will never read it. The third reason is because I have the ability to understand insurance actuary tables and I can read the writing on the wall.

Is anyone out there willing to take a guess at exactly why George Soros, Progressive Insurance (NYSE: PGR), and most of the rest of the auto insurance industry is so highly motivated to promote the green movement? Do you think it's because they want more trees available for the little birdies to sing in? Is it because someone said we're running a couple quarts low on oil? Could it be that they fear "green house gases" will soon choke us all? Nope, it's about none of those things. It all comes down to percentages, money, and control.

Verizon Communications (NYSE: VZ), reported Q3 earnings that dropped by 33% compared to the year-ago quarter, mainly based on tax-related charges. The telecom stalwart did see earnings reach $1.27 billion ($0.44 per share) in the July-to-September quarter, however. That figure compares to $1.92 billion ($0.66 per share) from 2006's Q3 period. Outside of Q3 charges, earnings would have been $0.63 per share, one-upping the consensus estimates of $0.62 per share.

Q3 revenue for the telecom carrier crept up almost 6% from the year-ago quarter, finishing at $23.8 billion, and as usual, Verizon's cellphone business saved the day (an all-too-common occurrence). Wireless operations are becoming the consistent engines of both Verizon and larger competitor AT&T (NYSE: T), as the two companies control the two largest cellular carriers in the U.S. for all the right profit reasons.

Verizon's wireless operations added 1.6 million new customers in the quarter, giving the company a total of 63.7 million customers. Verizon is catching up to AT&T's 65.7 million customers, although AT&T is not sitting still, and continues to add over a million new subscribers every quarter as well -- propelled nicely by being the only carrier to offer Apple (NASDAQ: AAPL)'s iPhone.

Outside of the cellphone arena, Verizon's FiOS business, which is the program to replace aging copper telephone lines with fiber optic lines directly to homes and businesses, did very well in the quarter. The company added 229,000 FiOS customers in the quarter, up quite a bit from the 203,000 it added in the Q2 period. It also began providing television service over those new fiber lines to 202,000 new customers in the quarter.

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Toshiba Corp. (OTC: TOSBF) saw quarterly operating profit increase of 38% for its latest quarter, due to increases in the sale of flash memory chips and nuclear power plants, according to the Japanese electronics conglomerate. Toshiba is the world's second-largest maker of flash memory chips (the NAND design) behind South Korean competitor Samsung Electronics, and such a large quarterly increase be a telltale sign for the consumer electronics industry.

For example, the storage needs of the world continue to explode every year, but more and more of that insatiable need is being requested by consumers instead of corporate data centers. The form of storage, though, is required to be portable, energy-efficient and super-tiny (think Apple iPod Nano). The solution? NAND flash storage, where Toshiba is a huge player. Apple Inc.'s (NASDAQ: AAPL) iPod line (not the larger, hard drive-based units) and almost every cellphone sold worldwide use some kind of NAND flash storage. As cellphones continue displacing landline phones and grow in capability with portable video and audio players, my guess is that NAND manufacturers will see even brighter days than they have already seen.

Now, here's the sticky part: Toshiba expects NAND prices to fall about 20% in the October-December quarter as the annual price decline continues in that market. Add an annual 50% price decline into the picture and it could strike some as odd. It's not -- this is standard operating procedure considering the supply-demand dynamic taking place. In addition to the red-hot NAND market, Toshiba's division responsible for nuclear reactor building (that's a change, no?) expects an operating profit for the year to come in at over $2.54 billion. Toshiba's largest competitor in that commercial space is General Electric (NYSE: GE).

Citigroup, Inc. (NYSE: C) saw a 57% drop in its Q3 profit as reported yesterday, which unfortunately should not come as any surprise to long-term watchers of the financial services company. I continue to be amazed that current CEO Chuck Prince, who took over from the legendary Sandy Weil four years ago, has lasted this long with the up-and-down performance levels he led the company to in his tenure.

Peter wrote on this a few weeks back, and it's something I completely agree with. As a shareholder in this company, I'm calling for change. Wait, I did that already (years ago). Perhaps my luck will change after this summer's credit crunch sacked Citi in the gut.

Let's pour some more salt in the wound: after yesterday's quarterly meltdown, the financial services behemoth acknowledged that the risk management models it has in place to prevent the kind of nuttiness bestowed upon it by the subprime lending situation that's still underway failed the company.

Samsung Electronics (LSE: SMSN) is a big name in the consumer electronics field these days. Personally, I use a Samsung cellphone, color laser printer, LCD computer monitor and more. In many cases, Samsung products have entered my home due to good pricing, stylish quality and excellent craftsmanship. Those amenities are apparently not enough to keep large profits flowing into South Korea's largest company (by revenue).

Samsung continues to be the world's largest seller of flat-panel screens (computer monitors and flat-panel televisions) and is a staple in the cellphone world, serving virtually every global market that exists along with almost every wireless carrier in established wireless markets. But, even with that, the company's share price is down 10% this year, and the company is expected to report its fourth straight quarter of declining profit. What's happened?

Margins have plummeted in many areas where it leads, such as flat-panel technology and computer components (Samsung makes more computer RAM memory than any other company). The company has been slow to create market-leading awareness in higher-margin businesses (like color laser printers), and its recent quarterly results show this. Are customers increasingly being more satisfied with Samsung's products, thereby waiting on upgrading and considering price as the main factor when they do? Perhaps.

Consumers in emerging markets have these same concerns as well (especially price), so where are all these new high-margin product segments at, then? That's the magic 8-ball question. I'll say this: I've owned a high-end Samsung cellphone since January of this year and don't plan on upgrading it for a long time. Why? Well, it works great and has every conceivable feature I could ever need in a cellphone. Samsung doesn't want to hear that, though. In other words, it may be making many products so good that customers have a stagnating need to buy the latest and greatest.

Profits of the 500 largest companies in the U.S. are up 80% from 2000 to 2006 with revenue up just 39%. Why? U.S. productivity is growing 3.9% per annum, one of the highest productivity growth rates in the world.

Another interesting data point from Shlomo Maital in this weekend's Barron's editorial is that total capital formation is only 17% of GDP, with two-thirds of it reinvested in obsolete plant and equipment. With unemployment and investment in new capital formation so low, this could mean employees are in a strong position to demand higher wages.

Although Maital did not conclude this in the editorial, what the economic data suggest are that economists and other pundits calling for the collapse of the consumer -- and, ergo, the U.S. economy -- are simply way off. As the housing market collapses, this has more to do with the mortgage market and new home sales. Do not expect this to spill over completely into consumer spending. The growth in wages in this economic cycle to date has been muted, but do not expect that to last forever. High productivity and the supply-and-demand balance favoring the laborer will more than offset the impact of the mortgage market.

I'm not writing this piece for my associate bloggers here on BloggingStocks. The fact of the matter is that most, if not all of them are far better, more well versed and more professional than myself. I don't even consider myself a professional writer. Basically I'm a hack commentator with some creative potential. But be that as it may, I do know a thing or two about presentation, and if there's one thing I've learned about blogging is that the presentation is what garners the healthy numbers. So, for the aspiring and struggling bloggers out there who want to expand their potential, this one's for you.

I get quite a lot of my material from three major news services. United Press International, Associated Press International, and The Financial News Wire. The angle is that I tend to quickly skip past the stories that I know everyone else is reporting. I know what's being reported because I research that fairly well. So when I get down to sifting through the news to determine what I'll present to you, I already have a pretty well formed picture of what stories are not requiring another go around. Sometimes I do present a piece regarding a story that has been hashed over pretty well, but in those cases you'll notice that I don't just put out a carbon copy of the press release. In the cases when I grab onto a hot headline to present content to the readers, it is my purpose to give them more of a scoop of my opinionated brain matter than just another carbon copied dateline.

An article in Sunday's London Times reveals first hand how some unscrupulous sellers on eBay (NASDAQ:EBAY) are defrauding honest customers out of their hard-earned cash. A reporter, posing as a well-to-do individual looking to sell high value antiquities, easily talked one of eBay UK's largest sellers into admitting that, oftentimes, the practice of shill bidding was used to assure adequate value for items sold on eBay.

In explaining how the process of shill bidding to inflate prices is accomplished, the subject of the interview stated:

"I've got some of my big clients who buy big items off me, I look after them. So I can get on the phone to America and say: Mr XXXX . . . you're a multi-millionaire. You buy a hundred grand's worth off me a year. Do me a favour would you. Just put - yeah. Exactly."

In response to the investigation, eBay claims that its new practice of hiding user ID's from view during the course of bidding has helped to address the shill bidding problem. I and many of my fellow sellers fail to see the connection. In times past it was fairly simple to formulate and chart patterns regarding systematic bid manipulation by specific seller groups, and we had success in shutting some of them down. Now however, there has been a iron wall placed between the identities of bidders and the balance of the eBay populace. This means that eBay itself is solely responsible for scouting its site for bidding violations, and I feel eBay's actions have made it abundantly clear that while the company will try to help, it's really not eBay's responsibility to protect you or your money.

I want to know: how does reducing transparency within the eBay auction venue result in greater safety for eBay buyers? It's problematic that eBay is only set to gain from high prices; if fraudulent sales practices do drive up final value fees, eBay's bottom line is given a boost. Obviously shill bidding is not an accepted practice; but why would eBay create the appearance of trying to hide it?

When I had first heard about eBay Inc.'s (NASDAQ: EBAY) attempt to build an eBay branded auction platform in China I was just about screaming at my monitor, "No no no, they'll never accept you like that!!!" I knew better than to think that trying to establish an eBay branded platform would work there in any manner or fashion. The girth of my protests was documented both on eBay's discussion boards and (I believe) here on BloggingStocks comments also. Too bad Meg and crew didn't hear my pitiful whining. I could have saved them some lost time and some major bucks. Now, in a bold and somewhat clever move, eBay has purchased into a joint venture with the Chinese mobile Internet portal Tom Online Inc. (NASDAQ:TOMO). Well, better late than never!

Tom Online is a Chinese owned multimedia company that holds a leadership position in wireless Internet services. Some of the company's involvements include: wireless Internet, interactive voice response systems, online advertising, search, advanced email, gaming and entertainment. TOM Online is a subsidiary of TOM Group Limited, a leading Chinese language media group in the Greater China region. The company has a demographic focus towards the young and mobile trend seekers.

This is a move by eBay that I like.