The past week finished on a somewhat bad note as the Bureau of Economic Analysis' "advanced" reading of U.S. GDP growth came in at 2.2%, markedly below economists' forecasts. However, even that wasn't enough to derail a week of strong earnings reports, which provided a nice tailwind for the markets that held through even that late-week disappointment. Among the big earnings headlines were sizeable beats from tech/consumer powerhouses Apple and Amazon.com.
By the time the dust had settled on Friday, the Dow Jones Industrial Average
The week's big losers
And here come the lawsuits. If we made a movie of Accretive Health's
Accretive didn't corner the market in headaches this week, though, as Allscripts'
The 3 Worst-Performing Russell 3000 Companies
Company | Weekly Price Change |
---|---|
Accretive Health | (51.2%) |
Maxwell Technologies | (41.6%) |
Allscripts | (37%) |
Source: S&P Capital IQ. Weekly price change is April 20-April 27. Includes only companies with market caps of $250 million or more.
Also among the week's worst performers were InterDigital
InterDigital was front-ended by earnings season. The patent developer reported quarterly results on Thursday, and investors didn't like what they saw. Revenue fell 12% from the prior year, while earnings per share plunged 53%. The EPS tally of $0.24 was well short of the $0.31 Wall Street was looking for. While it's tough to evaluate a business model like InterDigital's on a quarter-to-quarter basis, the disappointing results only built on a lackluster run that's been frustrating shareholders since last summer.
Deckers shares were slammed by a similarly disappointing quarterly report. If the way to get investors excited about an earnings report is to beat earnings expectations and raise guidance -- or "beat and raise," as the folks on TV say -- then a miss-and-cut is perhaps the best way to get them running. Deckers delivered the latter this week. Earnings per share fell 59% from last year, and the $0.20 tally missed the $0.25 average analyst estimate. Making matters worse, the company lowered full-year guidance to a range of $4.56 to $4.61, which is notably short of Wall Street's hoped-for $5.17.
At week's end, InterDigital had slid 13% while Deckers had 24% hacked off of its share price.
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