This is a light week for economic news, but there are plenty of earnings due out, including Amazon, Google, Facebook, eBay, IBM, Morgan Stanley, Halliburton and Microsoft announcing their quarterly financial results.
Morgan Stanley is expected to report a rise in first-quarter earnings when it posts results before the opening bell. The company's institutional securities business now depends more on equities trading business, rather than fixed income trading. The bank is trying to squeeze more revenue out of its major businesses by getting wealth clients to use investment banking and trading services. Ruth Porat, Morgan Stanley's chief financial officer, who helped execute a sweeping cost-cutting strategy across several business lines at the bank, will step down to join Google as its finance chief next month. It is expected to report earnings per share of 78 cents, against 74 cents for the same period last year, and revenue of $9.17 billion, up from $8.93 billion a year ago.
Halliburton is expected to report a lower first-quarter profit, hurt by soft drilling activity. Oil producers have significantly scaled back spending amid weak oil prices. The company has said it would cut more than 6,000 jobs and investors will seek details about any further cost cuts, especially after Schlumberger cut 11,000 more jobs. Halliburton is looking to complete its $35 billion acquisition of smaller rival Baker Hughes, which is expected to report its own first-quarter results on Tuesday. Wall Street is expecting revenue of $7.02 billion, against $6.99 billion a year ago.
IBM reports first-quarter earnings after markets close today. It disappointed investors last quarter as it continued to see a slowdown in its software business and struggled to improve sales as it transitions to a cloud- and software-based company from its more traditional hardware business. It has missed sales expectations in seven of the last eight quarters. Wall Street is expecting revenue of $19.7 billion, a 12 per cent decline from the year ago figure of $22.5 billion.
Today marks the fifth anniversary of BP’s Deepwater Horizon disaster, the worst oil spill in history.
Markets: Futures suggest a positive day on Wall Street. The Dow Jones is expected to open up 103 points at 17,873, the S&P to rise 11.5 points to 2,087, and the Nasdaq to grow 18.5 points to 4,367.5.
Alexandra Frean
US Business Editor
@freanie
|