Inventory Surprises, Part 1

Zacks.com submits: Intel Corp. (INTC) gave another stellar performance in its third quarter, beating the Zacks Consensus Estimate by 2 cents. The improvement was the result of stronger-than-expected revenues, which came in just short of the original guidance and in the middle of the revised guidance range. Investor response, however, was lukewarm, and shares climbed a mere 0.76% in after-hours in response to the news.

Hans Wagner submits: To the surprise of many, the first quarter 2010 earnings for many S&P 500 companies are beating estimates, and some substantially so. If this is an indication of greater strength in the economy, does this mean that the market rally will continue?Analysts are behind the curve in raising their earnings estimates during the recovery.

By Kapitall:Interested in adding some growth to your portfolio? For a closer look at some high-growth names from the semiconductors industry, we ran a screen.We began by screening the semiconductors industry of the tech sector for stocks with high growth projections, with 5-year projected EPS growth rates above 15%.

Jim Farrish submits:Earnings in the technology sector have been solid to impressive. However, the investor reaction has not been kind. Intel (INTC) posted another stellar quarter and the reward was a 1% loss. Apple (AAPL) couldn’t have been better and the stock drops 3%.

Hickey and Walters (Bespoke) submit: The strong growth in earnings seen in the first quarter has caused analysts to up their forward estimates quite a bit in recent weeks. Year-over-year earnings growth in Q1 for the S&P 500 is currently at 50%. Expectations at the start of earnings season were about 30%.

Zacks.com submits: Since Western Digital Corp. (WDC) reported its fourth quarter results, there have been a limited number of estimate revisions by the analysts covering the stock.

RetailSails submits:Retailers turned in a stronger-than-expected sales performance in December, as better inventory management and less promotional activity helped drive the best same-store sales results since April 2008. For the 32 companies RetailSails tracks, preliminary results show total sales rose 5.4% in December to $52.11 Billion, while same-store sales increased 3.0% compared to a 3.8% plunge in the year-ago period.