7 Reasons to Worry About Next Week

We're finally starting to roll through summer. If all goes well today, the market will have risen in two of the past three weeks, nibbling away at the second quarter's cruel setbacks.

It's not all perfect, though.

We're seemingly in buoyant times, yet there are still plenty of companies posting lower earnings than they did a year ago. Let's go over a few of the pretenders that are expected to go the wrong way on the bottom line next week.

Source: Yahoo! Finance.

Clearing the table
There will be more companies posting lower earnings next week, but these are just a few of the names that really jump out at me.

Akamai and Level 3 Communications are content-delivery networks, speeding up the downloading of website pages, digital media, and software updates. Akamai is the runaway market leader, but Level 3 has a wider portfolio of enterprise services beyond content delivery.

One would think that this would be a great time to be armed with a fleet of servers. Everyone is streaming more content. More bricks-and-mortar companies are beefing up their Web presence. Unfortunately, this has also become a cutthroat industry. Even the mighty Akamai isn't beyond holding its breath underwater for a spell to land a data-hog client.

Comcast is the country's largest cable provider, and it's bound to be bigger if it ultimately swallows NBC Universal. It has been losing cable television subscribers lately, but it's been more than offsetting those defections through gains on its Internet and broadband telephone fronts. I'm not too keen on Comcast's long-term prospects, but it wouldn't surprise me if Comcast actually improves on last year's $0.33-a-share showing. Comcast has been aggressively buying back stock this year, and lowering the number of shares outstanding is one way to pump earnings higher on a smaller per-share basis.

Shutterfly is a Web-based photofinishing provider. The red ink isn't the problem. This is a highly seasonal company, and Shutterfly historically overcomes the spring and summer doldrums with brisk sales of photographic greeting cards, personalized gifts, and high-quality photo books. Shutterfly's problem is that the pros see it losing quite a bit more than it shed during the same ho-hum period a year ago.

Sprint Nextel shareholders, on the other hand, should have a problem with the red ink. Most of its wireless carrier rivals are squarely profitable. Wednesday's report is expected to be the telco titan's 10th consecutive quarterly loss.

Boeing is the aerospace giant that should hopefully lay to rest all of the jokes tied to delays in its state-of-the-art Dreamliner 787. The shares do have promising upside if Boeing lives up to its promise and actually delivers the Dreamliner by year's end.

Finally, we have First Solar. The maker of solar modules is still quite profitable, but Wall Street is banking on the company falling considerably short of the $2.11 a share that it rang up during last year's second quarter. First Solar is going in a different direction than many of its solar energy peers that have recently propped trailing bottom-line results higher.  

Why the long face, short-seller?
These seven companies have -- literally -- seen better days. The market has rewarded many of these stocks with healthy gains over the past year, but they still haven't earned those upticks.

The good news here is that Wall Street already expects these companies to deliver shrinking bottom lines. In other words, the bad news is already baked into the shares.

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