Looking ahead, Jim Cramer plans to monitor quarterly earnings reports from four companies on Thursday.
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Jim Cramer
To start, Discover Financial Services will announce its earnings results before Thursday’s opening bell. Cramer hopes to learn more about how this financial services provider has partnered with eBay’s PayPal unit.
“There are so many new rival credit card systems being pushed by the venture capitalists and they all sound great, but the one that’s storming the retail barricades and taking it to Visa and MasterCard is eBay,” Cramer said. “I continue to believe that PayPal alone is worth all of eBay’s stock price, and the rest, that gigantic online merchant and fulfillment center, comes for free.”
Elsewhere in the market, McCormick is scheduled to report earnings Thursday. To Cramer, McCormick is not only a spice company – it is “the” spice company. He argued that what Hershey is to chocolate, McCormick is to spices, making it “best of breed.” So while its stock has pushed sharply higher lately, Cramer noted that investors are buying into what he considers a top quality company.
After the market’s close, Nike will deliver earnings. The sporting goods and athletic apparel maker recently announced a sizable stock buyback program, which Cramer considers a bullish sign.
“Unless management thinks it’s going to have a huge shortfall and then get to buy the stock cheaply, I would take the buyback as a sign of confidence,” Cramer said.
(See: Cramer's Top Dividend Stocks 2012)
Meanwhile, Research In Motion will also report earnings after Thursday’s close. Cramer said there may be more speculation that the technology company might put itself up for sale, even though he doubts that will happen. Either way, the BlackBerry maker continues to lose market share to rival Apple, which makes the popular iPhone device.
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When this story was published, Cramer’s charitable trust owned Apple.
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