Wednesday, September 9

Thursday, September 10

Friday, September 11

Palo Alto Networks (PANW)

The last cybersecurity stock to report for the second quarter season has an Estimize EPS Consensus of $0.26, one cent higher than both Wall Street and corporate guidance. The Estimize community is also looking for higher revenues of $258.12M compared to the Street’s estimate of $255.78M and guidance of $254.00M.

What to watch for: Palo Alto Network has been able to take advantage of the cybersecurity explosion as the frequency of cyber attacks in recent months have created serious concern in many large corporate and government entities. The company has seen an increase in both new subscriptions and renewals of existing contracts. The company has also been expanding and diversifying its product portfolio to cover a large spectrum of different needs, essentially evolving into a one-stop-shop for all cybersecurity services and platforms. Palo Alto’s strategy includes targeting larger corporations, recently releasing its new PA-7080 firewall that caters to large scale companies and governments. These initiatives geared towards increasing scale and power should allow the company to outpace industry growth and outperform competitors. However, PANW stocks dropped with the rest of Nasdaq and tech stocks following the uncertainty with the Chinese macro situation. Whether or not the stock can gain significant upward momentum following its fiscal Q4 results on Wednesday is yet to be seen.

Barnes and Nobles (BKS)

The Estimize EPS Consensus on BKS is in line with Wall Street’s estimate of $0.12. The Estimize Consensus predicts slightly lower revenues of $986.53M compared to the Street’s estimate of $986.60M.

What to watch for: Barnes and Nobles is in an industry that is undergoing significant change. Not only has the demand for paper books and goods gone down significantly, the bookstore industry is transforming traditional store-based companies into multi-channel players. After a lackluster fiscal 2015, the company recently spun off its college segment into Barnes & Noble Education (OTCQB:BNET) to allow for more focus within its operations. Nook, Barnes and Noble’s low performing e-commerce and digital reading initiative is paired with the education segment as well. With the spin-off of this weak segment, the company will begin paying a quarterly dividend of $0.15, an action the company was forced to stop when the Nook division saw deep losses. Fortunately, strong new book releases such as Harry Potter and Fifty Shades of Grey have driven a lot of Barnes and Nobles’ earnings over the years. With Harper Lee’s new book, Go Set a Watchman setting a record for first-day sales, it is possible that this best-selling title could boost Barnes and Nobles’ performance.