Tiffany now expects revenue growth for the full year to be 7%-8% rather than the previously forecast 10%. Operating margins are expected to be “modestly below” 2011 margins, and EPS is expected to come in at $3.70-$3.80, compared with a previous estimate of $3.95-$4.05. The consensus analyst estimate for full-year EPS had been $3.97.

The company is also adding to its debt, which rose from $687 million in the first quarter of 2011 to $834 million this year. Cash and cash equivalents and short-term investments totaled $343 million, compared with $622 million a year ago. This year’s debt load is equal to 35% of total shareholder equity, up from 30% a year ago.

Tiffany plans to open 24 new stores in 2012, to spend $240 million on capital improvements, and recently increased its dividend. The company’s stock buyback program spent $46 million in the first quarter and another $171 million remains in the program through January 2013. If Tiffany plans to spend at its current rate, debt will continue to grow as cash flows are not likely to keep up.

In pre-market trading this morning, Tiffany’s shares are down about -7% at $57.50 in a 52-week range of $56.21-$84.49.

Paul Ausick

Same store sales were up 5% for the most recent quarter. Costco’s shares trade at $83.50 up from a 52-week high of $70.22. Costco’s revenue per employees was $569,488 compared to $206,117 for Wal-Mart.

Target and Wal-Mart reported numbers which, although good, where much less robust.

Douglas A. McIntyre

On an adjusted basis H-P turned in earnings of $0.98 EPS on total sales of $30.69 billion.  This was above its prior guidance of $0.88 to $0.91 per share and above the consensus from Thomson Reuters of $0.91 EPS and $29.9 billion in revenues.

HP showed the following in PC and tech sales:

• Personal Systems Group revenue was flat year over year with a 5.5% operating margin.
• Commercial revenue increased 3%
• Consumer revenue declined 4%
• Workstations revenue was down 1%
• Desktop units were up 5%
• notebook units were down 6%
• total units were down 1%.

Results elsewhere are as follows:

• Services revenue declined 1% year over year with an 11.3% operating margin
• Imaging and Printing Group (IPG) revenue declined 10% year over year with a 13.2% operating margin.
• Enterprise Servers, Storage and Networking (ESSN) revenue declined 6% year over year with an 11.2% operating margin.
• HP Financial Services revenue grew 9% year over year driven by a 4% increase in net portfolio assets and a 5% increase in financing volume.
• Software revenue grew 22% year over year with a 17.7% operating margin, including the results of Autonomy… but it noted “Autonomy saw a significant decline in license revenue.”

HP spent $350 million of cash during the quarter to repurchase approximately 13 million shares of common stock in open market transactions and the company exited the quarter with $8.7 billion in gross cash.

Cutting another 8% of the workforce in the coming year or more is not going to come without pain.  What is also helping is that the crummy news coming out of Dell caused Dell’s worst day in a decade or more and that set the bar very low for H-P.  H-P closed down 3.2% at $21.08 against a prior 52-week low of $21.28, but shares are up 5.7% at $22.33 in the after-hours session.

Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ: MSFT) is not winning with H-P perhaps on lower total unit sales.  Shares closed down 2.2% at $29.11 and the stock is at $29.04 in the after-hours.  Intel Corporation (NASDAQ: INTC) is facing the same after a 2.3% drop to $25.44 today and the after-hours session is down at $25.35.

JON C. OGG

Chinese solar makers Suntech Power Holdings Co. Ltd. (NYSE: STP) and Trina Solar Ltd. (NYSE: TSL) both announced results for their first quarters. Suntech managed to beat revenue expectations, posting sales of $409.5 million versus a consensus estimate of $406 million. But the total reflects a decline of -34.9% sequentially and 53.3% year-over-year. The company posted an EPS loss of -$0.74 compared with an estimate of -$0.50. Gross margins fell to just 0.6%, down from 9.9% in the fourth quarter of 2011 and 20.8% in the same period a year ago.

Trina did even more poorly. Revenues totaled $350 million versus a consensus estimate of $398.5 million and the loss per ADR totaled -$0.42 compared with an estimated loss of -$0.29. Gross margins came in at 13.3%, but the company’s operating margin fell to -11.4%, somewhat better than the operating margin of -14.4% in the fourth quarter of 2011.

Profits and margins for both companies include reserves taken to pay the anti-dumping duties recently approved the US Department of Commerce.

Of the solar makers, only Renesola Ltd. (NYSE: SOL) put up solid enough numbers for the first quarter to enjoy any kind of bump in share price. First Solar Inc. (NASDAQ: FSLR) posted a surprise EPS loss for the first quarter and SunPower Corp. (NASDAQ: SPWR) missed on revenues while coming in slightly ahead of EPS estimates. Chinese solar maker LDK Solar Co. Ltd. (NYSE: LDK) posted horrible results in its fourth quarter and expected results for the first quarter don’t look good either. Neither do estimates for JA Solar Holdings Co. Ltd. (NASDAQ: JASO) or Yingli Green Energy Holding Co. Ltd. (NYSE: YGE).

Suntech said it expects shipments to increase by 20% in the second quarter and gross margins to improve to 3%-6%. The company maintained its full-year shipment guidance of 2,100-2,500 megawatts.

Trina forecast shipment growth of about 31%-37% in the second quarter and gross margins of around 10%. For the full year the company expects to ship 2,000-2,100 megawatts.

Shares of Suntech have fallen about -2.5% by early afternoon today to $1.93 in a 52-week range of $1.70-$8.50. Trina’s shares are up 0.75% at $5.37 in a 52-week range of $5.20-$23.64.

Paul Ausick

The guidance looks pretty bad too.  Dell is targeting growth of only being up 2% to 4% sequentially and that implies revenues of $14.7 billion to $15 billion rather than the $15.42 billion expected. Ouch!

Dell said that Enterprise Solutions and Services revenue grew about 2% year over year to $4.5 billion.  The company further noted that enterprise solutions and services businesses now account for 50 percent of its gross margin.

Large Enterprise revenue was $4.4 billion in the quarter, a drop of 3%; Public revenue was $3.5 billion, a drop of 4%; Small and Medium Business revenue grew 4 percent to $3.5 billion; Consumer revenue was $3 billion, a drop of 12%.

Here is a breakdown by region: Asia-Pacific and Japan revenue was flat but China increased 9%. EMEA revenue was down 1% and Americas was down 7%. Revenue in the BRIC countries increased 4 percent.

Dell ended the quarter with $17.2 billion in cash and investments against a market capitalization rate of $26.5 billion.  Shares closed up 0.7% at $15.08, but the stock is now down almost 8% at $13.75 in the after-hours session.

JON C. OGG

The most recent market stabilization and recovery could not have come sooner for Dell (and others).  Shares ended April at about $16.50 and the stock hit $14.75 before recently recovering to the $15.07 price today.  The 200-day moving average was cut through like butter on the downside over the last two weeks and there were four trading sessions that the 200-day moving average acted as a ceiling on.  That level is $15.82 and the 50-day moving average is $16.25 as of today.

Analysts still see upside in Dell with the consensus price target of $19.30 representing about 29% upside to Monday’s closing price.  Our big complaint is that Dell has so far refused to pay out a dividend. It has chosen to hold cash for a rainy day and to make acquisitions when possible. Dell also barely trades at 7-times its expected fiscal January-2013 year-end consensus targets from Thomson Reuters.

Options traders appear to be braced for a move of only about $0.60 or just over 4% in either direction based upon the speculative June 2012 put and call options prices.

The big question is no longer just PC sales.  Dell has been moving into services and consulting for businesses on top of its enterprise sales.  We will be looking forward to how Dell talks about the upcoming Windows 8 launch.

Whispernumber.com sent its whisper number to us today and noted that the whisper is also $0.46 just like the official target.  It also noted:

• Last quarter the company reported earnings in-line with the whisper number. Following that report the stock realized a 3.4% gain in five trading days.
• In the comparable quarter last year, the company reported earnings nine cents ahead of the whisper number.  Following that report the stock realized an 8.2% loss in five trading days.

JON C. OGG

Besides competing with smaller national rivals like RadioShack Corp. (NYSE: RSH) and GameStop Corp. (NYSE: GME), Best Buy has to slug it out with retailers Amazon.com Inc. (NASDAQ: AMZN), Wal-Mart Stores Inc. (NYSE: WMT), and direct sellers like Apple Inc. (NASDAQ: AAPL).

And while Best Buy touts its increases in sales of mobile phones and other portable devices, it also notes:

Areas of comparable store sales growth in the Domestic segment included tablets and mobile phones within the Computing & Mobile Phones revenue category, eReaders within the Consumer Electronics revenue category and Appliances. These increases were more than offset by comparable store sales declines primarily in notebooks within the Computing and Mobile Phones revenue category, gaming within the Entertainment revenue category, and digital imaging and televisions within the Consumer Electronics revenue category. The Domestic segment online channel revenue grew 20 percent compared to the prior-year period.

Selling more cheaper devices does not make up for lost sales in pricier items, unless a retailer can sell an enormous number. Best Buy can’t do that because there’s simply too much competition from wireless carriers, other retailers, and direct sales.

The company reiterated its full-year adjusted EPS guidance of $3.50-$3.80, in-line with the consensus estimate of $3.59. But weak international sales and declining same-store sales mean that Best Buy will be forced to close more stores, which will hurt revenues and ultimately profits unless the company can really figure out a way to boost its online sales. The outlook is probably not as rosy as the company would like us to think.

Shares are up about 1.6% in the pre-market, but were up as much as 6% at one point. Current price is $18.43 in a 52-week range of $17.53-$32.85. The 52-week low was set yesterday.

Paul Ausick

The specialty apparel retail outlet owner reported earnings of $0.23 per share versus the $0.20 per share estimate from Thomson Reuters. Revenues rose by more than 8.6% on a year over basis to $568.9 million. But Thomson Reuters was calling for revenues of more than $579 million.

It was the Urban Outfitters brand itself that led the sales as same-store sales there gained 6% and the direct-to-consumer sales rose 15% versus only 2% growth on the wholesale level. Despite the market treating this as a turnaround, the gross profit rate was down 131 basis points and the inventories rose by 13%. Selling, general and administrative expenses (SG&A) rose by 62 basis points.

Shares closed up 2.1% at $26.16 with a strong tape on the stock market today, but the after-hours reaction has shares up about 7% at $28.09 against a 52-week range of $21.47 to $33.90.

Today’s earnings report does not look or feel like a solid turnaround is coming on after the growth stalled significantly, but the market is treating it as “good enough” so far.

JON C. OGG

Smith & Wesson now sees its April quarter sales around $129 million versus the consensus of $119.8 million and versus its prior range of $113 million to $118 million.

The company’s preliminary firearm order backlog increased to about $439 million, up about 135% versus a year ago and up about 121% sequentially.  Ongoing strength in pistols and modern sporting rifles helped, as did a successful product launch.

No one wants to admit it this, but it seems as though gun demand may be running cyclical around election cycles as well.  Smith & Wesson shares are up over 5% at $6.59 versus a 52-week range of $2.29 to $8.62; Sturm, Ruger & Co. Inc. (NYSE: RGR) is down by over 5% at $40.13.  The difference between the two companies in size is that Smith Wesson is worth $428 million and Sturm Ruger is worth $768 million in market cap.

Alliant Techsystems Inc. (NYSE: ATK) has other operations tied to defense and space launches, but it is the leader in bullet manufacturing. The group’s products include brands such as Federal Premium, CCI, Speer, RCBS, Alliant Powder, Champion, Weaver, Eagle Industries, and Blackhawk! Industries. Alliant’s shares are up only 0.1% at $51.83 today and the 52-week range is $48.00 to $72.84.

Dirty Harry… “Well, we’re not going to just let you walk out of here.” Who’s We? “Smith, Wesson and me”

JON C. OGG

Take a look at any chart and you will see that Best Buy shares hit a low not seen since back in 2009 when every stock tied to retail and technology had hit the ‘free fall’ button.  This stock hit a low of $17.53 this morning and its prior 52-week range was $17.84 to $32.85.

Somehow Amazon remains the winner here.  Many buyers go to Best Buy to interact with consumer electronics and then turn around and buy the item online from a competitor to avoid sales tax and/or to pay a lower price.

Analysts still have a consensus price target around $25.00 for Best Buy, but for now that should not be trusted.  And what about that $3.59 EPS target for this year at Best Buy from Thomson Reuters?  Or the $3.72 EPS target for next year from Thomson Reuters?  If those were to remain true then Best Buy trades at only 5-times this year’s earnings and under 4.9-times next year’s earnings estimates.

The reality is that Best Buy has no CEO, it lost its founder, it is suffering from margin compression, and it is often cited as losing more and more of the potential customer base. BB&T Capital Markets also downgraded Best Buy shares to Hold from Buy just this morning, although admittedly that is just a very late downgrade.

The one thing which may actually act as a slingshot on any news that “lass bad” is that Best Buy has close to 54 million shares in its short interest per the most recent data.  It is hard to get excited that short sellers may drive up the price if the news is not just dismal.

JON C. OGG