3 Stocks Making Waves with Baidu in Early Market Trading

This story from Wall Street Cheat Sheet

The street was overjoyed with Baidu’s (NASDAQ:BIDU) fourth quarter earnings, but other stocks such as Exxon (NYSE:XOM) helped the Dow rebound from Friday’s beat down.

1) Exxon Mobil (NYSE:XOM): The country’s largest oil company reported a strong fourth quarter.  Increased energy prices and demand helped the company increase profits by 53%.  Profits in the fourth quarter were $9.25 billion ($1.85 per share).  Analysts were only expecting about $1.63 per share.  Revenue for 2010 rose $73 billion from the prior year to $383 million.  The stock was the second best performer in the Dow, rising over 2% on Monday.

2) Baidu.com Inc (NASDAQ:BIDU): Shares climbed 2% during Monday trading, and then another 7.7% in after market trading.  The company reported a double in net earnings, and almost revenue.  EPS for the fourth quarter came in at 50 cents, and revenue increased 94% to $371 million.

3) Honda (NYSE:HMC): Although profit declined, shares increased 3% on Monday.  Honda earned $977 million for the quarter, which is a 35% decrease from last year’s same quarter.  A strong yen decreased the company’s profit and revenue.  Shares remain flat in after market trading.

4) Rent-A-Center (Nasdaq:RCII): Total revenue for the fourth quarter increased $4.2 million from last year’s same quarter to $677.1 million.  Net earnings for the fourth quarter were $31.9 million (49 cents per share).

Mark Speese, CEO said, “We had excellent results in the fourth quarter.  In our core rent-to-own business, customer demand remained strong with our best gain in customer agreements in years and improvement in our margins with our continued focus on expense control.  As to our growth initiatives, we accelerated the expansion of our RAC Acceptance business with the acquisition of 158 kiosk locations from The Rental Store and have more than doubled our expected 2011 kiosk openings.”

Disclosure: No positions.

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