Stockwatch: Sugar-coated earnings ironies
This article was originally published in Scrip
Executive Summary
Last week saw the start of the deluge of third-quarter earnings reports from pharmaceutical, biotechnology and medical device companies. The first half of the week was punctuated by poor reports, some of which were advertised as the opposite by the investment bank analysts that cover the companies. The motives for sugar-coating bad financial reports are reasonably obvious, making it all the more embarrassing when it happens. Thankfully, the companies reporting towards the end of the week removed the need for any more sell-side fiction.