7 Reasons to Worry About Next Week

Oh, so this is how you're going to play it, Mr. Market?

After a few days of bouncing back after last week's wild swings, you give us yesterday's plunge? Fine! I don't need the Eurozone buckling at the knees to tell me I'm not wanted. I can see that just by eyeing some of corporations gearing up for quarterly conference calls.

There are still plenty of companies posting lower earnings than they did a year ago. Let's go over a few of the names that are expected to go the wrong way on the bottom line next week.

Source: Thomson Reuters.

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

Corinthian Colleges flew higher with the rest of its for-profit post-secondary educator peers during the early recessionary stages. Displaced workers and folks looking for more out of life than flipping burgers flocked to degree-spewing institutions for knowledge and resume padding. Well, burger flippers should note with amusement that shares of Corinthian Colleges trade for less than a Happy Meal.

Crummy student loan repayment rates and a tight economy have crushed enrollment rates at many of the post-secondary institutions. Corinthian Colleges may still be profitable, but it has taken a hard fall on the way down.

Selling board shorts and swimwear hasn't been easy at PacSun. The specialty apparel retailer has been wiping out in recent years, and analysts don't see a return to profitability in the near future. The problem now for PacSun is that those deficits are getting larger.

Trina Solar and Hanwha SolarOne are Chinese solar cell makers. Solar energy is inevitably going to be a huge market, but the past couple of years have been volatile for investors. The global economic malaise isn't helping, as countries scale back on rebates for green energy incentives. The sector will come around, but Trina and Hanwha shareholders will have to be patient. Analysts see both companies posting sharply lower earnings this year, and only making back a small part of that difference come 2012.

TiVo is rich in patents, but poor in subscriber growth. The DVR pioneer is now posting larger losses after briefly flirting with profitability two years ago. Is TiVo doomed to be a hardware-free royalty collector or can it get users of its namesake boxes growing again? The trend hasn't been kind in recent quarters.

Toll Brothers is one of the healthier homebuilders out there, but that's only a relative compliment these days. After the homebuyer tax credits dried up more than a year ago, developers have had a hard time moving new properties.

Finally, we have Madison Square Garden. Carmelo Anthony obviously isn't the solution to take the Knicks to the next level, and that's bad news for Madison Square Garden as the team owner, venue operator, and cable network. Did anyone really expect Anthony to be a team player in a new setting? The NBA lockout also isn't helping. There's always the Rangers, but the Knicks need to come through for MSG here. 

Why the long face, short-seller?
These seven companies have seen better days. The market has rewarded many of these stocks with reasonable 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.