This Week's Key Earnings Reports

This week is another busy earnings week.  Below we highlight key companies expected to report from July 21st through the 25th.  For each company, we provide the current earnings per share estimate and change in that estimate over the last month.  We also provide each stock's historical beat rate based on earnings reports going back to 2001 as well as the average one-day change in reaction to earnings. 

Probably the biggest names reporting this week are Apple (AAPL), Caterpillar (CAT), Boeing (BA), Wachovia (WB) and AT&T (T).  Apple kicks things off on Monday after the close.  Historically, Apple has averaged a change of 1.61% on report days and beaten earnings estimates 85% of the time.  Expectations are always high, so anything less than a beat for Apple will not be taken well.

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Comments

[Jared]

Ummmm, Bank of America, anyone? Hello? It's hard to believe BAC won't be as closely watched as WB or AAPL.

[will]

My money is on BAC over Apple. Apple will have record earnings and its stock will fall 20%. BAC will lose only $5B, thats better than $5.5B expected, so a pop of 30% is in order! Welcome to Wallstreet. Home of the crooked!

[TerminatorX]

Silly to list WB as more closely watched than BAC or POT...

[CR]

For those Amazon fans (AMZN) I would be very carefull. I would check out the latest tricks that are happening with AMZN and GE-Money. It may not be Amazon's fault but it certainly will cost amazon some revenue and income. I have since shorted Amazon. If you look at a long history of AMZN stock. It looks like it hit a top resistance and is heading down.
Check out:
www.complaintsboard.co...
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click on Google Search: amazon hdtv forum credit card

[David White]

POT definitely seems like a great option play through earnings, especially since it is down drastically today. Oil and grain futures have been down so far today. Plus there is the potential strike at POT of the steelworkers. Even with all this, POT ought to beat on earnings. It seems extremely likely to guide higher with the recent price increase by Canpotex (+21% on potash prices). Even with oil and grain prices currently going down, this seems like a great play. Plus the geoploitical situation in Iran is very much in play with regard to oil after Secretary Rice's recent comments. The hoped for success in negotiations is clearly not going to occur. If anything Iran has more forcefully denied that they have any intention of changing their nuclear strategy. The market seems to be letting this news slip off the front burner for a while. But that will almost certainly be a very short while. POT should go up on earnings. Plus even though the recent bumper crop announcements are though likely to curb grain prices, it is not clear that they will have any effect on the currently planned fertilizer prices (or demand). It is also not clear that next year's crops will be as good as this year's even with lots of fertilizer. Again demand is likely to rise going into next year.

[David White]

I should have pointed out that the current PE (46) and FPE (10) are likely to decrease considerably with the earnings announcement. The PE should move to the mid 30's range. If you add in the predicted earnings for the following quarter (3 months from now), the PE would go down to the low 20's. At this point you should begin to see that the stock is not that outrageously priced currently. It has a long way it can move up.