What's Ahead in the Week: Will Target Beat on Same-Store Sales?

In "What's Ahead on Wall Street" for the week of Feb. 22, several big retailers and other companies are set to release earnings.

We'll begin the week with Allergan (AGN - Get Report) and Fitbit (FIT) , followed by Home Depot (HD - Get Report) ,J.M. Smucker (SJM - Get Report) and Macy's (M - Get Report) on Tuesday.

On Wednesday we'll hear from Lowe's (LOW) , Target (TGT) and L Brands (LB) . On Thursday, Anheuser-Busch InBev (BUD)  Kraft Heinz (KHC) and Campbell Soup (CPB) will tell us how they did.

We'll end the week with Foot Locker (FL) and J.C. Penney (JCP)

Allergan, Target and Kraft Heinz are all holdings of Action Alerts PLUS, the charitable trust portfolio managed byTheStreet's Jim Cramer.

When Target releases results, analysts will be looking for earnings of $1.54 a share on revenue of a little under $22 billion. Both the top and bottom line are expected to increase slightly from a year ago.

Overall, the earnings report should give investors more clues about the health of the retail sector.

Molly Henningsen, research analyst for CNBC's "Mad Money," said, "When Target reports on Wednesday, one of the first things investors will be looking at are their same-store sales. Target had very strong same-store sales last quarter -- 1.9% -- so investors will be looking for another strong performance and same-store sales that are within the company's guidance of 1% to 2%.

"Investors will also be looking at how they've grown their digital channel sales because it's important that they maintain growth in their e-commerce platform as more and more customers become reliant on companies like Amazon (AMZN) to order things online."

In addition to the earnings reports, a few notable economic reports will be released during the week.

We'll get existing home sales on Tuesday, followed by new home sales and the weekly oil inventory data on Wednesday.

Towards the end of the week, we'll get durable goods orders, U.S. jobless claims, GDP and personal income and spending.

By U-Jin Lee 

Source:http://www.thestreet.com/story/13465389/1/what-s-ahead-in-the-week-will-target-beat-on-same-store-sales.html