Wall Street seems to think Google will beat Wall Street's "expectations" when it announces results tomorrow (Jan 20, 2010).
Interesting how this game works. 'We expect Google to do better than we expect.' Why didn't they expect this earlier?
Thomson Reuters says the consensus forecast is $6.45 (or $6.43, depending on who's quoting) per share and $4.9 billion in sales.
Kaufman Bros. expects Google will report earnings of $6.74 per share on sales of $4.98 billion, beating Kaufman's expectations of $6.64 per share on sales of $4.82 billion.
A collection from Eric Savitz at Barrons:
Broadpoint.Amtech expects $6.92, beating its expectations of $6.74.
BofA/Merrill Lynch DIDN'T change its expectations of $6.65, but still expects the stock to go up.
Credit Suisse didn't change expectations that people will drive the stock up this year, but changed the long-term target from $600 to $700 per share.
Oppenheimer didn't change Outperform rating, but thinks that the stock might decline when earnings are announced.
The stock declined 1.23% to $580.41 on Wednesday, possibly over concerns about the leak that Google may lose the iPhone biz. I wonder who leaked that. Or possibly because today was just a down day on the NASDAQ. As of 5:02 PM EST, stock had risen in after-hours trading by 0.19%
The recommendations collected by Savitz are:
Buy, Buy, Outperform, Buy, and Outperform.
But not all of them think you should do it before the earnings report. May go down first and then go up. It seems that all the news about Google beating estimates may keep it from beating the estimates.
Steven Sears at Barron's gives us two possibilities: the stock will either go up 5% or down 5%.