There's never a dull week on Wall Street. Let's go over some of the news that will shape the week to come.
Monday
The market kicks off the new trading week with ReneSola (SOL 6.29%) reporting. Analysts see the maker of solar photovoltaic wafers and modules posting a narrowing deficit on a 25% uptick in revenue. The red ink isn't fun, but ReneSola has posted much smaller losses than expected in each of the two previous quarters. That's a welcome trend heading into this report.
Tuesday
Walgreen (WBA -0.93%) is the drugstore giant with 8,678 locations filling up prescriptions, developing snapshots, and ringing up various items. Wall Street sees a small increase in revenue -- something validated by monthly comps, which have been positive through the period -- and a slight decrease in earnings per share.
Wednesday
When it comes to publicly traded retailers, Francesca's Holdings (FRAN) is a bit different. Instead of cashing in on a hot design and milking it across the company's empire, Francesca's boutiques prefer to stock a lot of items, offering a limited amount of each item. In other words, if shoppers see something they like they may as well buy it. There's no guarantee that it'll still be offered a few days later.
Francesca's was a winner out of the IPO gate, but it's been feeling mortal these days. It hasn't beaten Wall Street's profit targets in each of the past three quarters. Let's see if it can make its financials fashionable again.
Thursday
Hoping to make up for lost time, Microsoft (MSFT 1.65%) is hosting a media event that will likely promote new cloud-based initiatives. Several outlets are reporting that Microsoft will finally make its Office suite of applications available for iPad owners. That would be long overdue, given that we've now seen nearly 150 million iPads roll out since the device the market four years ago.
This past week, the software giant's stock hit highs last seen 14 years ago, so expectations will be lofty.
Friday
The final trading day of the week is typically quiet, but one of the few companies reporting on Friday this week will be BlackBerry (BB 3.21%). The smartphone pioneer has been struggling to gain relevance these days. It's losing market share, and bold attempts to beef up its operating system and product line have gone largely ignored by even the corporate clients that helped BlackBerry get off the ground in the first place.
Analysts see BlackBerry serving up its fourth consecutive quarterly deficit on a sharp plunge in revenue.
Let's look at a big trend that will grow beyond the week ahead
If you thought the iPod, the iPhone, and the iPad were amazing, just wait until you see this. One hundred of Apple's top engineers are busy building one in a secret lab. And an ABI Research report predicts 485 million of them could be sold over the next decade. But you can invest in it right now, for just a fraction of the price of Apple stock. Click here to get the full story in this eye-opening new report.
