Dangdang said it expects second quarter revenue of about $187.5 million, substantially lower than the consensus estimate of $202.5 million. As with first quarter results, revenue continues to grow by 50% or better year-over-year, but that’s not good enough. Renren Inc. (NYSE: RENN), China’s answer to Facebook, posted higher revenue in the first quarter, but costs soared 90% and the company’s forecast came in lower than the consensus estimate.

SINA Corp. (NASDAQ: SINA), which owns the country’s largest Twitter-like site Weibo, showed significant growth in its first quarter results as well, but it forecast higher costs and continued weakness in advertising as weighing down future results. Sohu.com Inc. (NASDAQ: SOHU), China’s third largest search engine, also forecast weak advertising sales for the second quarter. China’s search engine leader, Baidu Inc. (NASDAQ: BIDU), recently shuttered an e-commerce competitor to Dangdang and launched its own low-cost Android-based phone as the company continues to extend its reach beyond search. Baidu forecast lower-than-expected second quarter revenues as well.

Youku Inc. (NYSE: YOKU), a YouTube look-alike, is scheduled to announce results after markets close today. The company is expected to post an EPS loss of -$0.21 on revenue of $41.2 million. Another Internet video player, Tudou Holdings Ltd. (NASDAQ: TUDO) is scheduled to announce results next Monday and is expected to post an EPS loss of -$0.88 on revenue of $21.75 million.

China’s Internet users now number more than 550 million, according to a report at Mashable, but the annual growth rate has tumbled from a mind-boggling 50%+ to around 12%. And China trails only the US in the number of Internet shoppers, with 145 million people having made online purchases last year. The average number of purchases per month per customer is 8.4, well-above the second place US, where a customer averages 5.2 purchases a month.

But Chinese Internet companies have had a difficult time translating these numbers into yuan. The prevailing view among analysts appears to be that the revenue dam will burst real soon now, but not a single one of these companies has a higher share price today than it did a year ago. Dangdang is down a whopping -68% over the past 12 months and both SINA and Renren are off more than -50%. Baidu, which has lost just -9% in the past year, is the best performer. That’s a pretty sorry showing. Expecting this to change anytime soon may be wishful thinking.

Shares of Dangdang are off -15% in the early afternoon today, at $6.36 in a 52-week range of $4.11-$22.45. Shares of the other Chinese Internet players are also down this afternoon, but most by less than -3%.

Paul Ausick

Sony (NYSE: SNE) and Panasonic may force a partnership to build OLED TVs. (Reuters)

Trouble at Chesapeake Energy (NYSE: CHK) may prompt low-ball bids for many of the its assets. (Reuters)

New data from the government will show the extent to which people over 55 cannot find jobs. (Reuters)

Coty withdraws its $10.7 billion offer for Avon (NYSE: AVP). (Reuters)

Facebook raises the target of its IPO to $34 to $38, which could push a valuation as high as $106 billion. (WSJ)

LightSquared files for Chapter 11. (WSJ)

The chairman of Best Buy (NYSE: BBY) steps down over governance violations. (WSJ)

Investors are upset that Chesapeake had to take a $3 billion loan. (WSJ)

Baidu (NASDAQ: BIDU) to offer a low-cost smartphone. (WSJ)

Eurostat says EU industrial production fell in the March. (WSJ)

California governor Jerry Brown shows a series of planned cuts as projections for the state’s deficit rise to $15.7 billion. (WSJ)

Nvidia (NASDAQ: NVDA) and Intellectual Ventures buy 500 patents as the chip maker girds for patent wars. (WSJ)

JCPenney (NYSE: JCP) CEO Ron Johnson may be unable to work the same magic he did at Apple (NASDAQ: AAPL) stores. (WSJ)

JP Morgan (NYSE: JPM) CEO Jamie Dimon encourages a culture of risk at the bank. (WSJ)

Facebook still faces the question of how well it can do with smartphones. (FT)

Some EU officials would like to see eased terms of Greece’s austerity commitments. (Bloomberg)

A chip supply shortage could hurt smartphone sales. (Bloomberg)

Apple may launch a thin laptop powered by Intel (NASDAQ: INTC) chips. (Bloomberg)

Douglas A. McIntyre

The unofficial closing bells put the DJIA up nearly 24 points to 13,228.24 (0.18%), the NASDAQ rose nearly 19 points (0.61%) to 3,069.20, and the S&P 500 rose 0.24% or more than 3 points to 1,403.37.

There were several analyst upgrades and downgrades today, including Philip Morris International Inc. (NYSE: PM) reiterated as ‘buy’ and target price raised to $94 at Argus; SanDisk Corp. (NASDAQ: SNDK) raised to ‘buy’ at Jefferies; Baidu Inc. (NASDAQ: BIDU) maintained as ‘neutral’ but target price cut at Credit Suisse; Amazon.com Inc. (NASDAQ: AMZN) raised to ‘buy’ at BofA/ML, Nomura, and Goldman Sachs; and Alcatel-Lucent SA (NYSE: ALU) maintained as ‘underperform’ and estimates cut at Jefferies.

Earnings reports since markets closed last night have led to some price changes as of the last half hour of trading today: Amazon.com is up 15.6% at $226.64; Callaway Golf Co. (NYSE: ELY) is down -14.9% at $5.94 (our coverage here); Clearwire Corp. (NASDAQ: CLWR) is down -2.7% at $1.43; Deckers Outdoor Corp. (NASDAQ: DECK) is down -25.5% at $51.78 after posting a new 52-week low of $51.03 (our coverage here); Weyerhaeuser Corp. (NYSE: WY) is down -0.3% at $20.81 (more coverage here); TransCanada Corp. (NYSE: TRP) is up 0.5% at $44.01; The Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co. (NYSE: GT) is down -5.1% at $11.32; Procter & Gamble Co. (NYSE: PG) is down -4% at $64.18 (our coverage here); Newell Rubbermaid Inc. (NYSE: NWL) is up 3.6% at $18.61; Merck & Co. (NYSE: MRK) is down -0.2% at $38.38; Helen of Troy Ltd. (NASDAQ: HELE) is up 4.4% at $35.33; Ford Motor Co. (NYSE: F) is down -2.1% at $11.62 (our coverage here); and Covidien plc (NYSE: COV) is up 0.5% at $55.32.

Be sure to look at our list of next week’s big earnings.

Other standouts from today include the following stocks:

Chevron Corp. (NYSE: CVX) is up 0.2% at $106.44. The supermajor oil company reported earnings in line, but production was down. More coverage here.

Allscripts Healthcare Solutions Inc. (NASDAQ: MDRX) is down -36% at $10.25 after posting a new 52-week low of $9.00. The healthcare services provider fired its chairman, and the list of woes goes on. More coverage here.

Expedia Inc. (NASDAQ: EXPE) is up 24.4% at $40.59. The Internet travel company posted better-than-expected quarterly results. More coverage here.

Western Digital Corp. (NYSE: WDC) is down -14.2% at $37.83. The disk drive maker had solid earnings, but worries abound about next quarter. More coverage here.

Stay tuned for Monday. We have noted the following events on the schedule (all times Eastern):

• 8:30 a.m. – Personal income and spending
• 9:45 a.m. – Chicago PMI
• 10:30 a.m. – Dallas Fed manufacturing survey
• 11:30 a.m. – 3- and 6-month bill auctions
• 3:00 p.m. – Farm Prices

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Have a great weekend!

Paul Ausick

Aetna Inc. (NYSE: AET) Reiterated Buy with a target price of $55 at Argus.

Agnico-Eagle Mines Limited (NYSE: AEM) Raised to Outperform at Credit Suisse.

Air Products & Chemicals Inc. (NYSE: APD) Cut to Neutral at Citigroup.

Alcatel-Lucent SA (NYSE: ALU) Maintained Underperform and cut estimates at Jefferies.

Allscripts Healthcare (NASDAQ: MDRX) Cut to Neutral at Credit Suisse; Cut to Equal-weight at Barclays.

Amazon.com Inc. (NASDAQ: AMZN) Raised to Buy at BofA/ML; Raised to Buy at Nomura; Raised to Buy at Goldman Sachs; Maintained Hold but raised target to $230 at Canaccord Genuity.

Applied Micro Circuits Corp. (NASDAQ: AMCC) Cut to Hold at Wunderlich.

Baidu, Inc. (NASDAQ: BIDU) Maintained Neutral but target cut at Credit Suisse.

CBRE Group, Inc. (NYSE: CBG) named Bull of the Day at Zacks.

Constant Contact (NASDAQ: CTCT) Cut to Neutral at Janney; Cut to Market Perform William Blair.

Deckers Outdoor Corp. (NASDAQ: DECK) Cut to Hold at Jefferies; Cut to Hold at Canaccord Genuity.

eBay Inc. (NASDAQ: EBAY) Reiterated Buy and raised target to $48 from $40 at Argus.

Logitech International (NASDAQ: LOGI) Raised to Outperform at BNP Paribas.

MetroPCS (NYSE: PCS) Cut to Hold at Argus; Cut to Hold at Deutsche Bank; Cut to Hold at Canaccord Genuity.

Philip Morris International Inc. (NYSE: PM) Reiterated Buy and raised target to $94 from $88 at Argus.

Regeneron Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (NASDAQ: REGN) Cut to Market Perform at BMO.

SanDisk Corporation (NASDAQ: SNDK) Raised to Buy at Jefferies.

Seagate Technology PLC (NASDAQ: STX) Cut to Neutral at BofA/ML.

Western Digital Corporation (NYSE: WDC) Cut to Neutral at BofA/ML.

Zynga, Inc. (NASDAQ: ZNGA) Raised to Neutral at BofA/ML; Raised to Overweight at JPMorgan; Maintained Hold but cut target to $13 from $15 at Canaccord Genuity.

AAR Corporation (NYSE: AIR) named Bear of the Day at Zacks.

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JON C. OGG

Baidu’s revenue rose 75% in the first quarter to $677 million. Net income was up 76% to $299 million. The Chinese search company predicted second-quarter revenues would range from RMB5.335 billion ($847.2 million) and RMB5.460 billion ($867.0 million). That would represent a 56.2% to 59.9% year-over-year increase. But, on a quarterly sequential basis, the improvement is as little as 25%.

U.S. analysts who follow Baidu, primarily because it trades on Nasdaq, expect that Baidu should become nearly as big as Google is in America. But China’s Internet habits are different, based on a host of reasons. Perhaps the most important one is the careful eye that the central government keeps on Internet activity. Each search made can be a signal of the searcher’s intentions. In China, those intentions may be viewed as more than innocent. There was some evidence of that the government cancelled a number of “Twitter-like” Weibos posts and closed some accounts entirely because of “rumors” spread about disgraced government official Bo Xilai.

China has censored some Google results for years, because of fear that people who use Google might research subjects forbidden by the government.

It is also possible that search is not considered as useful a tool in China as in the U.S. There is less news to search. China is likely to allow fewer products to be searched for e-commerce. A typical Chinese resident has limited disposable income. The reasons for modest search activity may not be entirely explainable to analysts outside China, but there is some evidence from the size of Baidu’s revenue that the Internet is used in a manner different than in the U.S.

Baidu may never be a large company. That would make its current market cap much too large. That assumptions about Baidu’s value could turn out to be worthless.

Douglas A. McIntyre

Baidu reported earnings of $0.87 per share on a 75% revenue gain to $677.1 million.  We had estimates of $0.84 EPS and $677.37 million in revenue.  Again, it is the guidance that creates the concern: Baidu sees revenues in a Yuan-adjusted range of about $847.2 to $867 million, which is actually short of the Thomson Reuters consensus revenue estimate of $860.16 million.  Sadly, this is still 56% to almost 60% sales growth.

Baidu closed down 2.7% at $135.83 today, but shares are down $13.64 or 10% at $122.38 in the after-hours session against a 52-week trading range of $100.95 to $165.96.  Baidu’s market capitalization rate before tonight’s post-earnings drop was $47.4 billion according to Yahoo! Finance, and that was still over 13-times anticipated revenues for all of 2012.

Sometimes high growth just doesn’t quite cut it.  The cloud over Chinese companies which are public in America is certainly not helping the matter.

JON C. OGG

We are monitoring earnings reports from the following companies for Monday and Tuesday: ConocoPhillips (NYSE: COP); Illumina Inc. (NASDAQ: ILMN); Netflix, Inc. (NASDAQ: NFLX); Texas Instruments Inc. (NASDAQ: TXN); Amgen Inc. (NASDAQ: AMGN); Apple Inc. (NASDAQ: AAPL); AT&T Inc. (NYSE: T); Baidu Inc. (NASDAQ: BIDU); Coach Inc. (NYSE: COH); Juniper Networks Inc. (NYSE: JNPR); 3M Co. (NYSE: MMM); Regions Financial Corporation (NYSE: RF); United States Steel Corporation (NYSE: X); and United Technologies Corporation (NYSE: UTX).

More earnings report previews will come on Sunday or Monday for the reports due on Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday.  Consensus estimates and price targets are from Thomson Reuters.  Color has been on added on each if applicable.

MONDAY, April 23

ConocoPhillips (NYSE: COP) is set to report Monday morning and the break-up is going to make any real apples to apples comparison difficult to interpret.  Thomson Reuters has estimates of $2.07 EPS.  Shares are trading around $73.15 and the 52-week range is $58.65 to $81.50; Thomson Reuters had a consensus target as of Friday of $81.05.

Illumina Inc. (NASDAQ: ILMN) is no market mover with a $5.4 billion market cap, but it is a recent merger candidate even if that appears to be off the table.  Earnings estimates are $0.32 EPS and $263.6 million. Shares are trading around $44.00 and the 52-week range is $25.57 to $79.40; Thomson Reuters had a consensus target as of Friday of $52.71.

China’s GDP reaches a three-year low. (Reuters)

Bank of America (NYSE: BAC) will sell a large group of foreclosed homes. (Reuters)

Bank of America’s CEO, Brian Moynihan, will have to testify in a lawsuit brought by MBIA (NYSE: MBI). (Reuters)

Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) makes progress in adding cloud computing customers. (Reuters)

China’s growth rate drops to 8.1%. (WSJ)

Strong oil reserves worldwide make it less likely the Iran sanctions will lift crude prices higher. (WSJ)

Former Best Buy (NYSE: BBY) CEO Brian Dunn may have had a relationship with a female employee. (WSJ)

Kinder Morgan Energy Partners (NYSE: KMP) will put $5 billion into its mountain pipeline to move oil to Canada’s west coast; the oil will be sold to Asia. (WSJ)

BrightSource Energy withdraws its IPO, another example of problems in the solar industry. (NYT)

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau will not block deals for credit card companies to charge upfront fees. (NYT)

The European Union wants programs to limit banker bonuses. (FT)

The European Central Bank says it would prefer to buy bonds to support the region over making loans to banks. (Bloomberg)

Apple (NASDAQ: AAPL) denies the Justice Department’s accusation that it colluded with book companies to set e-book prices. (Bloomberg)

Illumina (NASDAQ: ILMN) shares fall on fear Roche will withdraw a bid to buy the firm. (Bloomberg)

The U.S. Geological Survey says some earthquakes probably are tied to fracking. (Bloomberg)

The maker of Angry Birds is in talks with Baidu (NASDAQ: BIDU) to enter China. (Bloomberg)

Douglas A. McIntyre

While this is no longer breaking news, the offering needs to be evaluated as another revenue and earnings stream.  Almost every penny of the Chinese web search giant comes from variations of online advertising.

The service will provide 15GB of free space.  As far as how it will make money, that will come from upselling for more storage from heavy storage users.

Thomson Reuters sees earnings of $4.60 EPS in 2012 with sales of $3.57 billion, so the $148.09 stock price generates an expected earnings multiple of about 32-times this year’s expected earnings.  Its $51 billion market cap creates a revenue multiple of about 14.5-times expected earnings.  So, the question boils down to just how much the company can add to revenues here, and ultimately to earnings.

Our take… Most likely this will be a story for 2013 and beyond as far as when it could really start to add to sales.  Online storage offerings will take time to grow to where users will need more than that 15GB space.  What the company is counting on is that once users start using a cloud storage product that it is just cheaper in the end to pay up for premium use rather than taking the time and effort of switching to a new storage offering elsewhere.

JON C. OGG

It is too much to say that broadband will be the undoing of governments in places like Russia and China. But broadband adoption was up 37% in Russia and 20% higher in China in 2011, according to research by DSL Prime. More than 158 million people in China had broadband connections at the end of last year. Nearly 27 million people were added in the People’s Republic during the year. The total number of people in Russia with service was 21 million, about the same as the UK and France. However, Russia added 5.5 million, many more than the two European nations combined.

Data about how people in China or Russia use broadband connections are scarce. If these people are like those in Western Europe, Japan and Korea, they use the connections for access to news, information and entertainment. Governments in these countries have little to fear because of entertainment programming. News and information are another matter. The effect of state-controlled information is eroded by broadband. The services allow the use of search engines like Baidu (NASDAQ: BIDU) the dominant service in China, and Yandex, the largest in Russia. Many of the results supplied by these search engines are limited by the governments, but it is much harder to block the dissemination of news.

Broadband has been a way to circumnavigate traditional news sources in places like the U.S. That movement nearly has destroyed some traditional media like newspapers. But the news in newspapers and that on the Internet have a great deal of information in common. That is not as true in Russia and China, as people there gain the ability to look at sites such as CNN and MSNBC.

Broadband may be good for its users, but for the governments who govern these users, it probably is not so good.

Douglas A. McIntyre