Stocks Roll Higher Ahead of Big-Time Earnings Next Week

• By the tickerspy.com Staff
• On 4:46 pm EDT, Friday October 9, 2009

Stocks closed the week with another solid performance, as the bulls remain fully in charge of this market. With a number of heavyweights in the financial, technology, and industrial sectors set to report earnings, next week will be an important one. In fact, we wouldn't be surprised if the next seven days not only sets the tone for earnings season, but perhaps the rest of 2009.

The RF Semiconductor Stocks Index was the top performing tickerspy Index on the day, led by Triquint Semiconductor (Nasdaq: TQNT - News) with a 9% gain.

The market continued its winning ways, with the Dow closing up 78 points to 9,865. The S&P added 6 points to 1,071, while the Nasdaq rose 15 points to 2,139. Oil inched up 8 cents to $71.77 a barrel, while gold slipped -$7.70 to $1,048.60 an ounce.

On the earnings front, oil major Chevron (NYSE: CVX - News) said that its Q3 upstream (production) results would be "significantly" better than Q2, while downstream (refining) results would be about flat. The company also said it would realize $400 million in gains related to asset sales and tax items. Analysts are looking for Chevron to earn $1.40 per share in Q3 after the company recorded net income of $1.75 billion, or 87 cents per share, in Q2. The stock rose 1.8%. Nearly 550 Pro investors counted the stock among their top-15 holdings at the start of Q3.

Indian outsourcer Infosys Technologies (Nasdaq: INFY - News) announced a fiscal Q2 profit of $317 million, or 56 cents per ADS, down slightly from $320 million, or 56 cents per ADS, a year ago. Analysts were looking for EPS of 51 cents. Revenue fell -5% to $1.15 billion. In local currency, profits rose 8% to 15.40 billion rupees from 14.32 billion rupees last year, while revenue rose 3% to 55.85 billion rupees. The company raised its earnings fiscal full-year forecast outlook to $2.09-$2.10 per ADS from $1.97-$2.00 per ADS. The stock fell -3.5%. Seventeen Pro investors counted the stock among their top-15 holdings at the start of Q3.

In M&A news, Occidental Petroleum (NYSE: OXY - News) has agreed to purchase Citigroup's (NYSE: C - News) commodity trading business Phibro for $250 million. Phibro has drawn criticism from the government, Citi's largest shareholder, for the pay package of its star trader Andrew Hall, said to be worth approximately $100 million. Occidental said Phibro has made around $200 million in pre-tax profits each year for the past 12 years, and that its employees will remain with the firm after the deal closes.

Elsewhere, Kimberly-Clark (NYSE: KMB - News) announced it was buying drug delivery system maker I-Flow (Nasdaq: IFLO - News) for $324 million, or $12.65 a share. The deal represents a 7.5% premium to the stock's closing price on Thursday. The transaction is expected to close in Q4 and be accretive to earnings in 2011. The acquisition is the second this week for the consumer products company. On Monday, it said it was purchasing Baylis Medical's pain management business for an undisclosed sum. Kimberly-Clark shares rose 0.3%.

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