Earnings Lift Market: Here Are The Highlights

Stocks are higher on a host of good earnings
reports.
In addition, producer
price data eased worries about faster interest rate hikes.

Coca-Cola
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reported better than expected earnings–excluding
items–and announced a $2 billion buyback. Quarterly net income fell 11%;
revenue rose 4%. The stock is trading up pre-open.

Johnson & Johnson
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reported 0.97, beating by 0.05.

Merrill Lynch
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posted a down quarter but beat expectations;
the company announced a $4 billion stock buyback and increased the dividend 25%.

Texas Instruments
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beat by a penny and guided in-line. Q1
profits rose 12%.

General Motors
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reported <1.48>, beating by a penny. GM bonds
are trading 800 basis points over treasuries. The company offered no guidance.
The yield on GM common stock is 7.6% but there is talk that dividend may be cut.
Revenue per vehicle dropped by almost $700.

Pfizer
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was in-line, ex-items. 


PPI for March was 0.7%, in-line; ex food and energy, +0.1, slightly lower.
Housing starts fell 17.6% in March. Building permits fell 4%.

Intel reports today after the bell; analysts are estimating 0.31 and
$8.89 billion in revenues.

Earnings this week (estimates in parentheses):

Wednesday

EBAY (0.18),  Caterpillar (1.34),  Ford (0.39),  MOT 
(0.19),  JPM (0.69),  QCOM (0.27),  SBC  (0.33),  YUM
(0.52)

Thursday

GOOG (0.92), T (0.59)  MCD (0.43)

Friday

EK (0.33), HAL (0.44), IP (0.33), MYG (0.20)

Two-thirds of firms that have provided Q2 guidance have guided lower.
Thompson Financial
says that Q1 earnings growth could be 11-12%.

Strong sectors are:  Gold
(
$XAU.X |
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+2.15%  
 Chemicals

(
$CEX.X |
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+1.95%   Natural Gas
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$XNG.X |
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+1.96%

Weak sectors are:  Airlines
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-1.75%  
Pharmaceuticals

(
$DRG.X |
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-0.32%   Retail

(
$RLX.X$ |
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-0.70% 

Dow  +57.7 10,128.96
Nasdaq +13.91 1926.83
S&P 500 +6.38 1152.36

The dollar is -0.23 at
83.77

Crude Oil is +1.53 at 53

Gold is +5.60 at 432.10

ce=”Arial” size=”2″ face=”Arial”>Volume is 961 million on the NYSE and
836 million on the Nasdaq

Market breadth is positive.

NYSE Issues
Advancing 2273 Up Vol 643
Declining 870 Down Vol 237
2.61 2.71
Nasdaq
Advancing 1868 Up Vol 576
Declining 960 Down Vol 190
1.94 3.03

Stocks in the News

Novellus
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reported in-line at 0.22; the company beat on
revenues but margins were lower than expected.

EMC Corp.
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was in-line at 0.11.

Radio Shack
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beat estimates, but warned.

American Standard
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beat by 0.11.

Viacom
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beat by 0.05 and revenues were slightly higher than
expected.

Sonus Networks
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lowered its forecast for Q1; the stock
traded lower after the close.

Lucent
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reported 0.06, in-line; revenues were $2.34 billion.
The company has $4.1 billion in cash and cash equivalents on the balance sheet.

Target
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said that April comps will be at the low end of the
2-4% range.

Taser
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missed by 0.02 and did not provide any guidance.

Brice Wightman