No question that last week’s headlines were taken up by the surprise beats from Apple (AAPL), Caterpillar (CAT), and Coach (COH) and the bottoming out at Netflix (NFLX) as subscriber growth helped earnings and revenues beat expectations. On the disappointing front Corning (GLW) and Devry (DV) took the bulk of the heat, but you also had headline disappointments from Peabody Energy (BTU), General Dynamics (GD), Bristol Myers Squibb (BMY), Chevron (CVX), and Ford (F).
So far, of the companies I have been following revenues has grown 7.5% versus the previous year’s quarter, and EPS has increased 11%. To me this is an encouraging sign that companies are able to growth both the bottom line, with improving margins, as well as revenue growth showing an improvement in consumer demand for their products. We still need to continue to monitor the next couple of weeks to see if this trend continues.
Last week had a large number of companies reporting, this week our selected group is smaller. We started off with the financials and moved on to last week’s reports from the manufacturing sector as well as the semiconductors. This week we have a few pharmaceutical companies - Biogen (BIIB), Eli Lilly (LLY), Pfizer (PFE), Gilead (GILD), Merck (MRK) - reporting as well as some retail companies - Chipotle (CMG), Yum! Brands (YUM), Green Mountain Coffee (GMCR), Estee Lauder (EL) - and some of the international technology companies - Baidu (BIDU), Sohu (SOHU), Broadcom (BRCM), Qualcomm (QCOM).
These are the companies due to report this week.
This week’s companies also share something in common, with many of the companies having missed expectations over the last 9 quarters. XOM’s place on the market capitalization battle for 1st place with AAPL may depend on how well they do in the report as well as the outlook they give for the year. For such a large company XOM’s revenues are expected to grow by 14%. AAPL’s revenues, which are ¼ of XOM’s, grew by 75% last quarter versus the previous year’s quarter.
For the upcoming companies in the pharmaceutical/health care front, this is what other companies in that sector have produced:
On the technology front, you can see that expectations have been harder to predict, with some companies beating nicely their expectations:
