Earning Surprises

The first stages of a government relaxation of natural gas subsidies and an upturn in supplies is likely to help GAIL (India) Ltd. post a positive earnings surprise. Natural gas is becoming the focus of a lot of chatter in the United States, where new discoveries in shale formations across the country have led to [...]

TV Asahi Corp. (9409.T) may want to be thankful – very thankful – for the universal popularity of football. After acquiring the rights to broadcast World Cup football matches and other qualifying events in Japan – along with other sporting events popular among the country’s citizens, including aquatic and ice skating competitions – TV Asahi [...]

The fourth quarter earnings season is drawing to a close , but as the focus shifts to the first quarter of 2013, anxiety is building about the pessimistic forecasts coming from S&P 500 companies. As the fourth quarter earnings season winds down, investors are turning their eyes to the outlook for corporate earnings for the [...]

A hectic price war between Nikon and arch-rival Canon during the holiday season has already taken its toll on Nikon’s third-quarter results, and now analysts are scrambling to cut their outlook for the full year, and into the next fiscal year. Black Friday and the holiday shopping season are receding in the rear-view mirror, leaving [...]

Weak demand for aluminum has collided with a period of growing supplies – supplies, however, that are costing producers like Chalco more, and resulting in them reporting negative margins and losses. Nor do analysts foresee any change in their gloomy outlook for the company’s financial prospects. The world today, with lackluster economic growth afflicting most [...]

Once again, companies that reported earnings last week outpaced analysts’ expectations, which clearly had been cut back too drastically in the face of obstacles to growth. Now the question becomes whether the same will prove true of the first quarter, as analysts once again take their pruning shears to earnings growth forecasts. In an earnings [...]

Plagued by lackluster domestic demand and geopolitical wrangles, Shiseido’s sales slump is likely to take a toll on the company’s profits. The attempts at stimulating Japan’s economy and the other concept enshrined in what has become known worldwide as “Abenomics” in honor of Japan’s newly-elected prime minister, Shinzo Abe, have yet to benefit Shiseido Co. [...]

With the fourth-quarter earnings season heading into the home stretch, even some sectors that analysts had expected would report underwhelming results are delivering positive surprises. One week after the next, companies in the S&P 500 have reported stronger than expected earnings. Of the S&P 500 companies that reported last week, 75% reported better-than-expected results and [...]

Even if consumers are swapping their PCs for tablets, the one constant will be their demand for touch screen devices, and Taiwan-based TPK Holdings is well positioned to profit from that and capture additional market share going forward. Two of the most buzzed-about topics in the technology world these days are the slowdown in the [...]

Advantest is facing a double whammy: demand from two key kinds of clients (smartphone companies and the PC manufacturers) is falling, putting the semiconductor testing equipment company on course to deliver a negative earnings surprise this spring. The kind of turbo-charged growth in demand for smartphones – at least in North America and Europe – [...]