Stronger Earnings Are Everywhere

Winter came and winter went, but springtime's arrival doesn't mean that stocks will also spring into action. After all, there is still plenty of financial uncertainty out there.

Thankfully, things are working out better than they were a year ago for a lot of companies these days.

I just went over seven stocks that analysts see posting higher quarterly results this week than they did a year earlier, but I was really only scratching the surface. Thankfully, there are a lot more than seven companies that are pegged to post year-over-year gains on the bottom line this week.

Let's go over a few more.

Source: Yahoo! Finance.

These are companies in vastly different industries. From a spice maker to a circuit-board maker, and from an enterprise-software company to the restaurateur behind Red Lobster and Olive Garden, it's a healthy cross-section of sectors that are serving up winners these days.

These reports will have meaty implications. KB Home and Lennar have seen their rival homebuilders post narrower deficits in their recent quarterly reports. If they are both able to deliver improved performance, even if it simply means bleeding less than they used to, it will be yet another round of confirmation that real estate developers have bottomed out.

The reports aren't going to be perfect. Many of these companies are fortunate in that their latest quarters are stacked up against the dreadful 2008 holiday quarter -- when sentiment was at its worst.  

However, since so many companies have yet to turn the corner financially, this isn't a time to get greedy. If Wall Street is giving us at least 14 companies projected to post year-over-year increases this week, I'll take it.

Which of these seven companies do you think will keep improving in 2010? Share your thoughts in the comment box below.