Thursday Earnings Preview: Nordstrom, Applied Materials And Aspen Technology

Thursday will witness three big earnings reports. After the market closes, Nordstrom, Inc. (NYSE: JWN), Applied Materials, Inc. (NASDAQ: AMAT) and Aspen Technology, Inc. (NASDAQ: AZPN) will announce quarterly financial results. Let’s take a look at what the Street and the crowd are expecting.

Nordstrom

As most retailers, Nordstrom’s earnings respond to a cycle: earnings peak in the fourth quarter, fall in the first and third quarter each year, and recuperate slightly in the second quarter.

For the second quarter of 2015, the Street and the crowd are expecting consensus earnings of $0.91 per share, up quarter-over-quarter (from $0.66 per share last quarter), but down year over year (from $0.95 per share reported a year ago).

Revenues are projected to surge both sequentially and year-over-year, from $3.296 billion in the second quarter of 2014 and $3.215 billion last quarter, to sales in the range of $3.652 billion to $3.655 billion this quarter.

Applied Materials

Applied Materials is expected to deliver the strongest quarter in terms of earnings since 2011. For the third fiscal quarter of 2015, the Street is anticipating consensus earnings of $0.33 per share on revenue of $2.538 billion, while the crowd is projecting earnings of $0.34 per share on revenue of $2.561 billion.

These figures compare to EPS of $0.28 on sales of $2.27 billion retrieved in the same quarter last year and EPS of $0.29 on sales of $2.4 billion reported last quarter.

Aspen Technology

The Street expects Aspen Technology to deliver earnings of $0.34 per share on revenue of $112.12 million. The crowd is slightly more bullish, and is projecting earnings of $0.36 per share on revenue of $112.91 million.

These results would imply an increase from the EPS of $0.31 on sales of $101.5 million reported a year ago, but a decline from last quarter’s EPS of $0.37 on revenue of $111.30 million.

It should be noted that Aspen has a history of comfortably surpassing estimates.

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