Looking Forward To An Eventful Week; Plus L, CNA, DO

Monday, February 11, 2019

With investors’ attention being drawn toward the end of this trading week — including another possible U.S. government shutdown at the end of this week, hopes of U.S./China trade negotiations making some progress before the March 1 deadline, statements from Federal Reserve members and a Brexit vote on Thursday — we still have Q4 earnings reports to digest through this, the last of the earnings-heavy weeks from a wide variety of industries. Beginning next week we start hearing from retailers, who often have a quarter-end at January instead of December in order to account for holiday sales gains.

For a comprehensive view of what to expect from this week beyond company-specific news from stocks in the S&P 500, et. al., make sure to take a look at Zacks Chief Strategist John Blank’s latest Global Week Ahead report: “Kick the Can Down the Road”: Global Week Ahead

After today’s market close, we look forward to earnings reports from companies such as Vornado Realty (NYSE:VNO) and Zacks Rank #1 (Strong Buy) Molina Healthcare (NYSE:MOH) . Later in the week we hear from Under Armour (NYSE:UAA) , Nvidia (NASDAQ:NVDA) , Coke (NYSE:KO) , Pepsi (NASDAQ:PEP) and CBS (NYSE:CBS) .

This morning, well-known conglomerate Loews Corp. (NYSE:L) came in woefully shy of expectations, based on higher quarterly costs and overall operating revenues which fell 4.7% year over year. Loews, the parent company of insurance company CNA Financial (NYSE:CNA) and E&P staple Diamond Offshore Drilling (NYSE:DO) , saw lower-than-expected results from both of these two components of its business.

Diamond Offshore missed expectations on the bottom line by 2 cents per share to a loss of 42 cents, on quarterly revenues of $232.5 million which tumbled 5.8% year over year. But it was CNA’s numbers that really hurt Loews in the quarter: -8 cents per share was reported when expectations were for 81 cents in profit. Core income was -22.7% off estimates, and -94% year over year. All 3 companies had Zacks Rank #4 (Sell) ratings ahead of the earnings reports.

Mark Vickery
Senior Editor

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