[C3.] Barnes & Noble Inc., the nation's largest bookseller, posted a 17percentt increase in fourth-quarter earnings, meeting forecasts.
Cincinnati-based Macy's reported a 13.3% plunge in November, meeting forecasts, and it lowered its guidance for same-store sales in the fourth quarter to a 1.0%-6.0 1.0%-6.0.
U.S. companies are facing pressure to meet earnings expectations, and research indicates that meeting analyst forecasts is a more important benchmark than meeting the prior year's earnings or avoiding losses.
That meant every contract was crucial in meeting profit forecasts, and the front-loading of profits gave the company the appearance of rapid growth.
Like many other big publicly traded companies, Freddie Mac put a premium on meeting analysts' forecasts of its profits and providing consistent growth in reported earnings.
And so it was perhaps predictable that buyers flooded into technology stocks last week, after Dell Computer and Cisco Systems confirmed that they were on track to meeting earnings forecasts made in sunny August.
At its April meeting the Fed forecast that the economy would grow by about 2.7 percent this year.
On Jan . 9 Mr. Eyler said a decline in sales during the holiday season would keep the company from meeting analysts' earnings forecast for its 2002 fiscal year, which ends Feb. 1.
AT a market forecast meeting last month attended by 300 commercial real estate professionals in New Jersey, two speakers from the same company performed something of a bad-cop/good-cop routine about prospects for next year.
To be fair, he and the rest of the council have stressed for a number of months that the existing package of policy measures must be given time to work, and that an assessment of whether there might be a need to do more would not happen before the September meeting and staff forecast update," he said.
