7 Reasons to Worry About Next Week

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The Dow may be continuing to fence-straddle 10,000 this week, but there are plenty of reasons to fear falling backward.

As earnings season wears on, we're bumping into a lot of companies that aren't bouncing back the way their buoyant share prices would seem to suggest.

Let's go over a few of the blue chips and seemingly recession-proof companies where analysts see the arrows pointing down on the bottom line next week. Some of the names may surprise you.

Company	Latest Quarter EPS (Estimated)	Year-Ago Quarter EPS
Dollar Thrifty (NYSE: DTG)	$0.79	$0.89
Corning (Nasdaq: GLW)	$0.39	$0.46
DENTSPLY (Nasdaq: XRAY)	$0.44	$0.46
Hess (NYSE: HES)	$0.56	$2.37
Qwest (NYSE: Q)	$0.07	$0.09
Monster Worldwide (NYSE: MWW)	$0.00	$0.40
Motorola (NYSE: MOT)	$0.00	$0.05

Source: Yahoo! Finance.

Clearing the table
Several companies will post lower earnings next week; these are just a few of the names that really jump out at me.

Let's start with Dollar Thrifty. Car rentals don't seem like a very sexy sector, but the stock has been one of the rally's biggest winners. Shares have soared more than 40-fold since bottoming out in March. You read that right. Dollar Thrifty is a 40-bagger since it was trading for a mere $0.60 seven months ago. One would expect some serious turnaround to justify those gains, yet analysts see earnings actually clocking in 11% lower.

Corning's bread and butter of specialty glass and ceramics may sound ho-hum, but we're talking about a company with its hands in everything from fiber optics to LCD television sets. Those aren't necessarily good things to focus on right now, though.

DENSTPLY customers may expect their patients to open wide, but the dental supply company isn't opening wide with its earnings growth. The company makes dental consumables like implants, orthodontic appliances, and topical fluoride. Is the economy so bad that we're not seeing the dentist anymore? This was supposed to be an all-weather play, since most people can't ignore tooth pain or regular cleanings.

Hess is the crude oil and natural gas giant. With oil prices more than doubling since their recent lows, can Hess really only earn a quarter of what it rang up a year ago? Wall Street seems to think so.

Qwest is a provider of fiber-optic Internet service and high-speed Internet solutions, often with corporate bent. The stock is also attractive for income investors, given a juicy yield that's pushing 9%. Investors will want to keep watching the bottom line, though. If net income keeps falling, the dividend is going to be hard to maintain.

Monster Worldwide is the company behind the popular Monster.com jobs listings website. Uncertain economic times should lead to brisk traffic as the unemployed -- and nervously employed -- explore what's out there. Well, Monster is no monster these days, with revenue projected to fall by 35% and last year's profit completely dismembered.

Finally, we have Motorola. Even with the company losing its edge in mobile handsets to sexier smartphone makers, this is still a global titan that topped $30 billion in sales in 2008. With its hands in broadband communications infrastructure, public safety solutions, and high-def devices, Mr. Market thinks the company will simply break even next week.

Why the long face, short-seller?
These reports aren't likely to be pretty. Many of these stocks are market darlings in seemingly healthy sectors, to boot. A maker of dental sealants losing its bite? A stock that may be making 40-bagger promises that its fundamentals can't keep? This isn't going to be an attractive quarter, even if you still have that Hess truck toy you received as a kid.

There is a silver lining, though. Investors are already braced for the worst with these reports. If there is an upside to this grim list, it's that lower profitability is already baked into next week's reports. It actually opens the door for unexpected surprises.

The more I think about it, the less worried I become.