Major Earnings Estimates, A Bar Set Too Low (INTC, AMR, LUV, BTU, GOOG, GCI, HOG, GE)

We have already seen at least one major upside surprise in earnings season for the Q1-2009 period. But we have many major companies which are expected to report earnings this week that are market-movers that are likely to set the trends for this earnings season. Among these are CSX Corp. (NYSE: CSX), Intel Corporation (NASDAQ: INTC), AMR Corporation (NYSE: AMR), Peabody Energy Corp. (BTU), Google Inc. (NASDAQ: GOOG), Gannett Co., Inc. (NYSE: GCI), Harley-Davidson, Inc. (NYSE: HOG), and General Electric Co. (NYSE: GE). You’ll notice we have left financial stocks off of here, as that is for another piece.

It turns out some of these have seen the bar lowered by analysts to the point that these companies could represent very large “fake” upside surprises. Compared to last year, or even last quarter, some of these earnings are genuinely going to be atrocious. The good news here is that most traders and analysts just refer to the consensus estimates, and for these we use the Thomson Reuters (First Call) estimates. We wanted to outline how these earnings compare to history and to estimates, and how much these have recovered with the rally in the last five weeks.

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