FedEx (NYSE: FDX ) and Discover Financial Services (NYSE: DFS ) both rolled out
strong earnings reports Thursday and that's about where the similarities
ended. FedEx cruised to an 8%-plus gain Thursday after beating Wall Street
expectations for fiscal second-quarter earnings per share, posting $1.57 against
estimates of $1.52. FedEx's performance far outshined last year, with net
income up 76% to $497 million, and revenue up 10% to $10.59 billion. FedEx CEO
Frederick Smith attributed the quarterly boom to "effective yield management
programs" as well as to improved demand for FedEx's Home Delivery and
SmartPost services as a huge holiday season for online shopping has boosted
residential deliveries. FedEx also announced an order for 27 new 767 aircraft
from Boeing (NYSE: BA ), which recently made its biggest deal in company history
a $19 billion, 208-plane contract with Southwest Airlines (NYSE: LUV ) that
eclipsed November's boffo deals with Emirates airline and Indonesia's Lion
Air. Discover put together quarterly earnings of 95 cents per share, beating
analysts' estimates of 89 cents per share and crushing the year-ago period's
64 cents. The earnings beat was DFS's fourth in a row, with numbers surpassing
expectations by 27 cents, 37 cents and 31 cents in the past three quarters.
Unfortunately, investors yawned at the first non-double-digit beat of the year
and hit the stock for a 3% loss. This also came despite Discover's second
dividend increase for the year a 10-cent-per-share hike payable on Jan. 19,
2012. A couple of Thursday's biggest stock moves came from the tech and pharma
sectors. Lam Research (NASDAQ: LRCX ) extended a $3.3 billion stock offer for
Novellus (NASDAQ: NVLS ) both sell front-end semiconductor manufacturing
equipment. Novellus jumped 16%, and its counterpart gave up more than 8%. Also,
Covidien (NYSE: COV ) mimicked Abbott Labs (NYSE: ABT ) by announcing a spin-off
of its pharma business into another publicly traded company, which sent COV
shares up about 3%. Three Up Sonosite (NASDAQ: SONO ): Up 27.13% ($11.46) to
$53.70. WebMD (NASDAQ: WBMD ): Up 9.07% ($3.14) to $37.75. Delta Air Lines
(NYSE: DAL ): Up 5.4% (44 cents) to $8.59. Three Down InterMune (NASDAQ: ITMN ):
Down 30.34% ($5.55) to $12.74. Deckers (NASDAQ: DECK ): Down 9.55% ($9.13) to
$86.46. Green Mountain Coffee Roasters (NASDAQ: GMCR ): Down 7.06% ($3.37) to
$44.35. As of this writing, Kyle Woodley did not hold a position in any of the
aforementioned stocks. Check out our list of previous IP Market Recaps .
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