Zacks Earnings Trends Highlights: Apple, Google, Intel, Texas Instruments and Verizon - Press Releases

For Immediate Release

Chicago, IL – February 2, 2010 - Zacks Research Equity Strategist Dirk Van Dijk says that S&P 500 earnings are continuing to show red ink. He tracks companies on the Zacks.com web site, naming names, while forecasting trends for the months ahead.

Don’t Blame It On Earnings

With 43.4% of the reports in, this has been a very strong earnings season so far (although one would not know that by looking at the market action). Yes, we had easy comps from a year ago, but 84.8% year-over-year growth is nothing to sneeze at.

Most of that eye-popping growth is due to a handful of firms, mostly in the Financials. However, even if the Financials are excluded earnings growth is still 20.3%.

A majority of firms are reporting higher earnings than a year ago. Earnings are coming in much better than expected, with 77.9% of all firms reporting coming in with better than expected earnings.

The positive estimate revisions in the Technology sector were dominated by some of the biggest and most well known of the Tech firms. Together, Apple (AAPL), Google (GOOG), Intel (INTC) and Texas Instruments (TXN) accounted for 30.9% of all positive estimate revisions for 2010 over the last 4 weeks, and just 2.7% of all negative revisions. All four reported large positive earnings and revenue surprises for the fourth quarter.

On the other hand, Verizon (VZ), which reported disappointing earnings and revenues, was singlehandedly responsible for 24.8% of all estimate cuts in the sector over the last four weeks.

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Contact: Dirk Van Dijk, CFA
Company: Zacks.com
Phone: 312-265-9211
Email: pr@zacks.com
Visit: www.zacks.com

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