CVS And Whole Foods To Set The Stage For Retail Earnings?

• Upcoming earnings highlights include reports from two leading specialty retailers.
• Wall Street analysts are looking for earnings growth from only one of them.
• The retail earnings parade kicks off in earnest the following week.

The parade of earnings reports from the big retailers doesn't really begin until the following week, but specialty retailers CVS Health Corp (NYSE: CVS) and Whole Foods Market, Inc. (NYSE: WFM) will get things started this week.

If these two companies are to set the stage for retail earnings to come, then things could be mixed, as Wall Street analysts expect bottom line growth from only one of these two quarterly reports. Note that these retailers also have mixed records when it comes to exceeding or falling short of earnings estimates.

Below is a quick look at what analysts expect from the CVS and Whole Foods reports, followed by a glance at some of the other most anticipated earnings results expected this week.

CVS Health

Wall Street's consensus forecast for the second-largest U.S. pharmacy chain calls for earnings per share to have crept up $0.02 from the same period of last year to $1.16. The Estimize forecast is a penny higher than that. But note that CVS has not bested earnings expectations since last summer.

The forecasts from a consensus of 29 Estimize respondents and from Wall Street call for revenue in the first quarter to total $43.01 billion. That would be up more than 18 percent from in the similar period of last year. CVS is scheduled to share its latest results before the opening bell on Tuesday.

See also: Merck And Pfizer Earnings: Will They Beat Expectations Again?

Whole Foods

When the first certified organic grocer in the United States shares its results late Wednesday, the Wall Street forecast is that it will post EPS of $0.41 for the first quarter, along with revenue of $3.72 billion. That would compare to the $0.43 per share and $3.65 billion posted in last year's fiscal second quarter.

The 31 Estimize survey respondents are slightly more optimistic, calling for $0.42 in EPS and $3.75 billion in revenue. Like Wall Street, they far underestimated earnings in the previous period, after overestimating it in the two periods before that. The current Wall Street estimate has not changed in 60 days.

And Others

Other companies that Wall Street analysts expect to show at least some earnings growth when they report this week include Alibaba, Berkshire Hathaway, CenturyLink, Cigna, HCA, Medivation, Pfizer, Sysco, Time Warner and Twenty-First Century Fox. Analysts are looking for Merck to say that EPS were the same as in the year-ago period.

On the other hand, EPS at Activision Blizzard, ADM, AIG, Allstate, Anheuser-Busch, Avon Products, Dominion Resources, Duke Energy, Emerson Electric, Exelon, Humana, Kellogg, MetLife, MGM Resorts, Mosaic, News Corp, Prudential Financial, Starwood Hotels, Tenet Healthcare, Transocean and Western Union will be smaller than a year ago, according to the consensus forecasts.

Net losses are in the cards for Anadarko Petroleum, Avis Budget, Chesapeake Energy, Devon Energy, Frontier Communications, Marathon Oil, Occidental Petroleum and Tesla Motors, if expectations are accurate.

At the time of this writing, the author had no position in the mentioned equities.

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