Google shines this week but next week's earnings is a party

The first week of the current earnings season is over and the picture which can be drawn from among the important releases is mixed though somewhat tilted to the positive side, in the sense that no outright bad news is good news these days and most companies have positively surprised.

• Alcoa disappointed on EPS but as we noted investors missed the point as Alcoa's underlying business is still improving and seeing expanding margins.
• ASML, Europe's largest semiconductor equipment maker, beat EPS estimates and saw more orders than anticipated and guided with growth in orders in the next couple of quarters.
• PepsiCo reported earnings in line with expectations on healthy volume growth but cited increasing input costs from commodities going forward and a difficult pricing environment in the U.S.
• J.P. Morgan Chase & Co., the U.S. banking behemoth, reported earnings that beat estimates by 10 percent driven primarily by a debt-valuation accounting gains on its own liabilities. Overall business activity was yet again flat on a 12 months rolling basis and loan provisions went actually up which was quite disappointing. Traditional investment banking and trading activities were lower than last quarter as clients were more passive following the spike in volatility. Overall not a very robust or confident earnings release from JPMorgan but it shows some positive signs in the underlying credit quality of homeowners. Most disturbing though is the fact that JPMorgan's result will probably be among Wall Street's best banking results, so what does that tell us about next week's banking sector earnings?
• Google, the world's largest search provider, beat earnings estimates by 11 percent after the market close yesterday driven by strong demand for online advertising as the number of click on ads rose about 28 percent year-over-year in a sign that companies maybe believe in growth and the future which is in contrast to what the news' headlines tell us these days. The company's Android software for smartphones is close to reaching USD 2.5 billion in revenue on an annual basis as the software has emerged as the largest smartphone operating system. The shares are up 7.9 percent in German trading.

A common denominator for the companies above is the lack of confidence in their outlooks for 2012. Every company's management is saying visibility is so low that 2012 forecasts are too unreliable. This is not exactly what investors want to hear but that is the reality.

Moving on to next week's earnings, investors will get a very good proxy on the overall earnings season as 139 companies in the S&P 500 and STOXX 600 Indices are reporting earnings and amongst them some of the largest companies in the world.

You can download the PDF with all the planned earnings releases here

Monday
IBM, Wells Fargo, Citigroup and Halliburton.

Tuesday
Apple, Johnson & Johnson, Coca-Cola, Intel, Bank of America, Goldman Sachs and CSX Corp.

Wednesday
Nordea Bank, TeliaSonera, Abbott Laboratories, United Technologies, American Express, eBay, Freeport-McMoRan Copper & Gold, Morgan Stanley and BlackRock.

Thursday
Nokia, Kone, Ericsson, Microsoft, AT&T, Philip Morris International, Eli Lilly and Union Pacific.

Friday
Yara International, Atlas Copco, General Electric, Verizon Communications, McDonald's, Schlumberger and Honeywell.