3M Q1 2007 Earnings Preview

By Douglas A. McIntyre Published Apr 25, 10:40PM EDT

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3M Co. (MMM-NYSE) is expected to post EPS of $1.12 on revenues of $5.69 Billion, and if the company offers guidance the analyst community is expecting $1.12 EPS and revenues of $5.91 Billion for the following quarter. Without hitting all of the painful details, the stock is up off recent lows but has been essentially dead money for the better part of more than 3 years.

It is more than difficult to determine which parts of the company could be “unlocked” and it is impossible to know from an outsider stance as to which units could use some “shearing” to improve the bottom line; but what is obvious is that there are areas of interest and areas for improvement. Some of this is up to George Buckley to decide. The truth is that multi-national conglomerates are getting harder and harder to adequately run, even if they do offer strategic advantages in slower or less robust times.

The stock is still right in the middle of its 52-week trading range of $67.05 to $88.35 based on the $76.97 close. This company (and other conglomerate operations) needs to do more for shareholders.

Jon C. Ogg
April 25, 2007

Jon Ogg can be reached at [email protected]; he does not own securities in the companies he covers.

About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.