Five Successful Companies Where Earnings Failed to Help

By Douglas A. McIntyre Published Nov 20, 6:35AM EST

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Good earnings should translate into improved stock prices. For some reason, things did not work out that way for several large companies that posted strong results for the third quarter. Share prices for these public corporations may have been too high already in Wall Street’s estimation. Earnings forecasts for the balance of the year may have been too weak. For whatever reason, five major American companies did not get the share price bump their managements must have believed they would.

Facebook Inc.’s (NYSE: FB) stock sold off by 14% over the past month. Its earnings results looked better than most analysts expected. Not only did revenue ramp at a healthy pace, Facebook said its mobile traffic had improved, which many investors worried about. The world’s largest social network had a small erosion of use among teenagers, but it was hard to find much more wrong.

Ford Motor Co. (NYSE: F) released numbers that showed it has continued its advance in America. Its position in China, the world’s largest car market, appears to have improved. Sales in Europe remain a problem, but the entire industry suffers the same as Ford does by that account. The turnaround at Ford that began just after the recession continues. Perhaps investors believe Ford cannot keep up the pace of that improvement. Shares of the number two U.S. car marker are down almost 4% in the past month.

AT&T Inc. (NYSE: T) shareholders got most of what they wanted based on the most recent quarter’s results. The major driver of the company’s success, its wireless business, continues to dominate the American market along with Verizon. While its landline operations continue to lose subscribers, its U-verse fiber TV and Internet products continue to erode the market share of satellite and cable companies. AT&T’s shares have risen only 1% in the past month, not nearly as good as the S&P 500.

Investors have gotten almost everything they wanted from CBS Corp. (NYSE: CBS), but its shares are down 1% in the past month. Revenue rose 11% in the past quarter to $3.6 billion. Per-share earnings rose 19% to $0.76. Its two largest segments — entertainment and cable — each showed improvement.

Shares of Berkshire Hathaway Inc. (NYSE: BRK-A) have fallen 1% during the past month. The earnings it released last quarter were very slightly below forecasts, but net income did rise 30%. Since then, the enthusiasm about Warren Buffett’s performance has been bolstered by the positions he took or has already in large cap companies, led by Goldman Sachs Group Inc. (NYSE: GS) and American Express Co. (NYSE: AXP).

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.