Companies to Report Earnings

After weeks of negative pre-announcements, investors will finally get their chance to see some actual corporate earnings this week as the season begins in earnest. Some of America’s top high-tech companies are set to report quarterly earnings this week, including Internet media firm Yahoo Inc., Web infrastructure provider Juniper Networks and computer chip maker Advanced Micro Devices Inc. Among old-line companies, conglomerate General Electric and car maker General Motors Corp. are expected to release results. “If we see the bad news is out and earnings are coming through in line with expectations, the market will start to feel better,” said Michelle Clayman, chief investment officer with New Amsterdam Partners, which oversees $1.1 billion. “For the most part, companies who were going to drop bombs have already done so though it’s not over until it’s over.” So far, 26 of the S&P; 500 companies that have reported earnings have beaten the average analyst estimate, while seven matched. Two missed estimates, according to market research firm First Call/Thomson Financial. After earnings warnings from companies such as Xerox Corp., Gillette Co. and Intel Corp., the average profit growth for the companies in the index is expected to be 15.9%. That’s down from a forecast of 18.7% when the quarter ended June 30, First Call said.

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Quarterly Earnings Report Expected

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Day Company Estimate Year-Ago EPS* EPS* This week GE 0.32 0.27 Monday Abbott Labs 0.42 0.38 Biogen 0.43 0.39 Intl Paper 0.52 0.46 Tuesday Motorola 0.26 0.16 Yahoo 0.12 0.7 AMD 0.62 --0.36 Bestfoods 0.69 0.64 Delphi Auto 0.26 0.24 Fannie Mae 1.08 0.94 Wednesday Bausch & Lomb 0.70 0.64 Costco 0.43 0.39 Gateway 0.46 0.35 GM 1.58 1.33 Juniper Networks 0.09 -0.01 KLA-Tencor 0.51 0.19 Maytag 0.74 0.92 PMC-Sierra 0.26 0.13 Visx 0.18 0.36 Thursday Boise Cascade 0.44 0.74 Flextronics 0.43 0.29

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Source: First Call/Thomson Financial * EPS: Earnings per share