After a long week filled with company earnings releases and conference calls, I wanted to mention a few of them and how they did.
Apple - the earnings that they released were fantastic as they continue to gain market share in the tablet, PC, and handheld phone businesses; interestingly, the majority of their growth is now coming from overseas, specifically Asia. They also raised their earnings guidance for the remainder of the year.
Microsoft - their earnings were decent, but fell slightly short because PC (computer) sales have been slow. The bright spot is that the company is sitting on a large hoard of cash (north of 50 billion), and they don't really know what to do with all that money. The last time they had that much "extra cash" on their books they paid out a special dividend to their stock holders.
Yahoo - the company released numbers that were slightly below expectations as they've lost search market share to Google. The bright spot for the company however continues to be their search and advertising businesses in China and Japan - which is ultimately the reason why the Yahoo story is exciting.
Google - had a great quarter and continues to take search market share (as mentioned above). The company is also taking see growth internationally.
Citigroup and Bank of America - both of these financial companies released earnings that were better than was expected. As the U.S. and Global economies have struggled to recover from the worldwide recession that we saw over the past 4 years, the financial sector has been one of the hardest hit...all that being said, both of these banks are starting to see their businesses improve.
General Electric - the diversified conglomerate, which does everything from making kitchen appliances to airplane engines to wind turbines to owning television stations (such as NBC), reported slightly good numbers and said that they were starting to see a uptick in global economic activity.
McDonalds - had an excellent quarter as the company is seeing large growth overseas. Over the past couple of years, the company has been aggressively expanding overseas, specifically in Asia (does anyone see a pattern here?).
These are just a few of the big name companies that many people are familiar with. Earnings releases will continue to come out over the next couple of weeks.
As a disclaimer, the stocks I mentioned above do not represent any recommendation to buy or sell, I was just providing a general overview of the market with respect to some of the most well known publicly traded companies. Any investment action should be confirmed and discussed with your individual advisor. In full disclosure, I personally own Etrade, Citigroup, Bank of America, and Yahoo.
