The Week Ahead (22 April 2007)

From William Trent, CFA of Stock Market Beat

The Economic Calendar is relatively light this week. Potential market movers include:

Earnings are another story. We are in the peak part of earnings season this week. A few of the stocks we follow:

Monday

Altera (ALTR) – valuation is rich but looks set up to beat on earnings.
Texas Instruments (TXN – Annual Report) – March and June quarters have both had significant downward revisions. Will day of reckoning be forestalled?

Tuesday

AU Optronics (AUO) – Forecasting losses, but panel business may have bottomed out.
CDW Corporation (CDWC) – 14.6% sales growth doable given Berbee acquisition.
CH Robinson (CHRW) – Could beat.
CSG Systems (CSGS) – earnings should be a piece of cake. If private equity buyers don’t take them out they’ll do it themselves the slow way.
Lexmark (LXK) – Estimates are doable but we’re always waiting for this company to trip up.
ST Microelectronics (STM) – Doing the right thing. Hopefully will pay off.
AT&T (T) – Estimates and stock both keep rising.

Wednesday

Apple (AAPL) – Hunch: company will blow away earnings, issue horrible guidance and blame it on iPhone build.
Arkansas Best (ABFS) – We’re staying away from truckers who own trucks.
Corning (GLW) – current quarter ok, guidance at risk.
LSI Logic (LSI) – May blame their poor guidance on Agere.
Maxim (MXIM) – Company is out of gas but focus will be on whether they might sell out.
Qualcomm (QCOM) – Nokia Nokia Blah Blah Nokia ad nauseam (excerpt from pending conference call transcript)
Silicon Laboratories SLAB – Sold wireless just when biggest customer began to recover. What other surprises may be in store?
UPS (UPS) – They shouldn’t have trouble beating the estimates (but that doesn’t mean they won’t).
Xilinx (XLNX) – Altera with more risk to the earnings target.

Thursday

Curtiss Wright (CW) – PPI data suggests they should beat big, but it suggested the same last quarter.
KLA Tencor (KLAC) – Another place we’d rather not be right now.
Microsoft (MSFT – Annual Report) – Vista is still not living up to expectations.
MEMC Electronics (WFR) – Earnings surprises have been getting bigger each quarter. Now that we’ve put a semiconductor name on our Large Cap Watch List it will probably stop just to spite us.
YRC Worldwide (YRCW) – See Arkansas Best.
Sandisk (SNDK – Annual Report) – Will take more than one quarter to clear the channel inventory.

Friday

Dassault Systemes (DASTY) – We like Ansys (ANSS) better but don’t see why this name wouldn’t beat.
Ceradyne (CRDN) – Earnings could be anywhere and don’t really matter.

Enjoy!

Disclosure: Author has a short position in Ceradyne put options at time of publication.