Earnings Season: A Few Early Returns

Earnings season is kicking into high gear and we had two earnings reports Thursday morning.

First up is Baxter International (BAX). For the third quarter, the company earned 98 cents a share, which is one penny ahead of estimates. The problem is that sales came in at $3.15 billion, which is just below estimates of $3.19 billion. The company said to expect Q4 earnings between $1.02 and $1.04, though the consensus is $1.04. The stock was down about 3.5% Thursday, which didn't make a lot of sense to me.

This was a good report and BAX is doing very well. Since Baxter usually provides precise guidance, it doesn’t often deliver a big earnings surprise. The stock is currently going for about 13 times next year’s earnings which is a good deal.

Amphenol (APH) was also lower Thursday after beating earnings. The company reported earnings of 47 cents a share, which was a big drop from 63 cents a share one year ago. Fortunately, that came in four cents above the Street’s estimates. Sales dropped 17%, but analysts were expecting an even large drop.

For Q4, APH sees earnings ranging between 47 and 49 cents a share, and revenue between $720 million and $735 million. The Street was expecting earnings of 47 cents a share on revenue of $711.6 million.

Finally, Donaldson (DCI) doesn’t report until November but the shares were up Thursday thanks to an upgrade from Credit Suisse. The analyst raised his price target from $28 to $41.