The Other Half of Earnings Week: Deere, Analog Devices, Two China ADRs, Klarna and Toll Brothers
The trading week that opens on Monday, August 17 will be filed away as retail week, and with Home Depot, Target, Lowe's, TJX, Walmart and Ross Stores all reporting inside four sessions, that filing is fair enough. It is also incomplete. Between Tuesday morning and Thursday morning, six companies with almost nothing to do with same-store sales will publish results, and between them they cover the farm economy, the industrial semiconductor cycle, Chinese consumption, consumer credit and luxury housing. Each answers a question the retailers cannot.
Every date, release timing and call time below was checked against the reporting company's own investor-relations announcement or press release rather than an earnings-calendar aggregator, and that exercise turned up two things worth stating plainly at the top. Deere's conference call is at 10:00 a.m. Eastern, which is after the opening bell, not before it; Deere's own announcement gives that call time but does not state when the release itself crosses the wire, and its second-quarter release in May was issued at 6:20 a.m. Eastern, before the open. And Toll Brothers is a two-day event: the numbers arrive after the close on Tuesday, but management does not take questions until Wednesday morning. Anyone modelling either name off a single calendar line will get the sequencing wrong.
Deere & Company (NYSE: DE) reports fiscal third-quarter results on Thursday, August 20. The company's own announcement sets the conference call for 9:00 a.m. central time, which is 10:00 a.m. Eastern, and Deere's investor-relations event listing carries the same 9:00 a.m. central start. This is the single best read on the farm economy in the calendar, and it arrives with the company already having told the market that the agricultural side of its business is contracting.
The setup comes from Deere's second quarter, reported in May for the period ended May 3. Net income was $1.773 billion, down 2 percent year over year, on diluted earnings per share of $6.55 against $6.64 a year earlier. Worldwide net sales and revenues rose 5 percent to $13.369 billion. Those headline figures conceal a violent divergence underneath: Production and Precision Agriculture net sales fell 14 percent and its operating profit fell 39 percent, while Small Agriculture and Turf sales rose 16 percent with operating profit up 25 percent, and Construction and Forestry sales rose 29 percent with operating profit up 48 percent. Deere did not lean on one engine in the second quarter; it leaned on two, because the third had stalled.
For the full fiscal year, Deere has guided to net income of $4.5 billion to $5.0 billion, with Production and Precision Ag sales down 5 to 10 percent, Small Ag and Turf up roughly 15 percent, Construction and Forestry up roughly 20 percent, and financial services net income of about $860 million. All of those are GAAP net income figures rather than adjusted measures, which is worth noting because Deere is one of the few large industrials that guides on a straight net income basis. The question on Thursday is whether the large-ag decline is stabilising at the guided range or deepening past it, and whether construction can keep offsetting it at a 20 percent growth rate that is itself a demanding comparison. On consensus, a Barchart earnings preview carried by Yahoo Finance puts third-quarter diluted earnings per share at $4.85, up 2.1 percent from $4.75 in the year-ago quarter. That preview does not name the estimate provider behind the number and gives no revenue consensus, so it should be treated as one desk's compilation rather than an industry-standard figure. We have not found a second published provider for the same quarter to cross-check it against, and we are not going to manufacture one by pairing that earnings number with a revenue estimate from somewhere else.
Analog Devices (NASDAQ: ADI) reports fiscal third-quarter results at 7:00 a.m. Eastern on Wednesday, August 19, with a conference call at 10:00 a.m. Eastern the same day, according to the company's own announcement. The quarter ends August 1. ADI is the counterweight to the AI-memory trade: an analog and mixed-signal supplier whose demand comes from factory automation, automotive and communications infrastructure rather than from hyperscaler capital budgets, which makes it a read on the physical industrial economy rather than on data-centre appetite.
ADI's second quarter, for the period ended May 2, produced record revenue of $3.623 billion. The gap between reporting bases there is unusually wide and needs stating explicitly: GAAP diluted earnings per share were $2.40 on a GAAP operating margin of 38.1 percent, while adjusted, non-GAAP diluted earnings per share were $3.09 on an adjusted operating margin of 49.0 percent. That is roughly eleven percentage points of operating margin and 69 cents of earnings separating the two presentations, almost all of it the $394 million of acquisition-related expenses ADI adds back, which the company describes as fair-value adjustments and amortisation of acquisition-related intangibles. Any headline next Wednesday that cites a margin near 49 percent is quoting the adjusted figure.
For the third quarter, ADI has guided to revenue of $3.9 billion plus or minus $100 million, GAAP earnings per share of $2.60 plus or minus $0.15 on a GAAP operating margin of about 39.0 percent plus or minus 150 basis points, and adjusted earnings per share of $3.30 plus or minus $0.15 on an adjusted operating margin of about 49.0 percent plus or minus 100 basis points. The company also declared a dividend of $1.10 per share payable June 16 and said it returned $1.3 billion to shareholders through dividends and buybacks in the second quarter. Two published consensus figures for ADI's quarter agree, which is worth recording because they often do not. A Zacks preview puts the consensus at $3.33 in adjusted earnings per share, implying 62.4 percent growth, on revenue of $3.92 billion, implying 36.3 percent growth, and notes the earnings figure was trimmed by a penny over the prior thirty days. A separate Barchart preview carries the same $3.33 adjusted figure and a full-year fiscal 2026 estimate of $12.42, up from $7.79 in fiscal 2025, though Barchart does not identify its provider. Both sit three cents above the midpoint of ADI's own adjusted guidance, so the company has been given a modest beat to clear on the non-GAAP line.
Alibaba Group (NYSE: BABA; HKEX: 9988 for the Hong Kong dollar counter and 89988 for the renminbi counter) reports unaudited results for the quarter ended June 30 before the US market opens on Thursday, August 20, with a conference call at 7:30 a.m. Eastern, which is 7:30 p.m. Hong Kong time. Alibaba prepares its accounts under US GAAP, not IFRS, and supplements them with non-GAAP measures, so the comparison basis is the same one US industrials use even though the filer is a foreign private issuer.
The June quarter matters because of what happened in the one before it. In the March quarter, Alibaba's revenue rose 3 percent to RMB243,380 million, or US$35,283 million, and Cloud Intelligence Group revenue grew 38 percent to RMB41,626 million, with the company noting that AI-related product revenue had recorded triple-digit growth for an eleventh consecutive quarter. Customer management revenue grew 1 percent, or 8 percent on what the company described as a like-for-like basis excluding contra revenue. But the profit line collapsed: Alibaba recorded a loss from operations of RMB848 million against a profit of RMB28,465 million a year earlier, and non-GAAP net income of RMB86 million, effectively wiping out the prior-year figure. Growing cloud revenue at 38 percent while operating income goes to zero is the central tension in this name, and the June quarter is the first full period to show whether that was a step-change in spending or a single-quarter trough.
Baidu (NASDAQ: BIDU; HKEX: 9888 and 89888) reports second-quarter results before the US market opens on Tuesday, August 18, with a call at 8:00 a.m. Eastern, which is 8:00 p.m. Beijing time. Note the Hong Kong codes differ from Alibaba's by a single digit, 9888 against 9988, which is a reliable source of error in the same week both report. Baidu also reports under US GAAP. In the first quarter it posted total revenues of RMB32.1 billion, or US$4.65 billion, with online marketing revenue down 22 percent year over year to RMB12.6 billion while AI Cloud infrastructure revenue grew 79 percent to RMB8.8 billion and the core AI-powered business grew 49 percent to RMB13.6 billion. Non-GAAP net income attributable to Baidu was RMB4.3 billion, or US$628 million. Apollo Go, the robotaxi unit, delivered 3.2 million fully driverless rides, growth of more than 120 percent, across 27 cities.
Taken together the two Chinese names give near-opposite readings of the same economy. Baidu is a business whose legacy advertising engine is shrinking by more than a fifth while its AI and autonomy businesses compound, a substitution story where the question is whether the new revenue arrives faster than the old revenue leaves. Alibaba is a business whose revenue is still growing but whose margin has been surrendered to investment. Neither is primarily a read on the Chinese consumer any more, which is itself the finding.
Klarna Group plc (NYSE: KLAR) publishes second-quarter results before market open on Tuesday, August 18, with an earnings webcast at 8:30 a.m. Eastern the same day. The reporting basis here is different from every other name in this article and the distinction is material: Klarna prepares its consolidated financial statements under IFRS, not US GAAP, and reports in US dollars. IFRS expected-credit-loss provisioning does not map cleanly onto US GAAP allowances, so cross-reading Klarna's credit metrics against a US card issuer's requires care. Klarna is also less freshly public than it is often described: it priced at $40 a share on September 9, 2025 and listed on the NYSE the following day, making this its fourth quarterly report as a listed company.
In the first quarter Klarna reported revenue of $1,012 million, up 44 percent, gross merchandise volume of $33.7 billion, up 33 percent, and 119 million active consumers, up 21 percent. Its take rate was 3.00 percent, 24 basis points higher year over year, and its provision for credit losses was 0.55 percent of GMV, one basis point higher. IFRS net income was $1 million, an improvement of roughly $100 million, while adjusted operating profit was $68 million. For the full year the company has set out targets including GMV above $155 billion, revenue above 2.80 percent of GMV and adjusted operating profit above 6.9 percent of revenue. The share price has been the counter-argument: an IG recap published June 24, 2026 put the stock at roughly $17.66 as of June 18, well below the $40 IPO price. That is a two-month-old quote carried here as history, not as a current price. With July retail sales having fallen 0.6 percent, that 0.55 percent credit-loss rate is the number that carries the most information in the whole week.
Toll Brothers (NYSE: TOL) will announce third-quarter results for the period ended July 31 after the market close on Tuesday, August 18, and hold its conference call at 8:30 a.m. Eastern on Wednesday, August 19. It is the first set of numbers to cover a full quarter under Karl Mistry, who succeeded Douglas Yearley as chief executive on March 30, 2026, with Yearley moving to executive chairman. In the second quarter Toll delivered 2,491 homes against 2,899 a year earlier, on home sales revenues of $2.51 billion against $2.71 billion, with net income of $260.6 million and diluted earnings per share of $2.72, down from $352.4 million and $3.50. Home sales gross margin was 23.9 percent against 26.0 percent, and adjusted home sales gross margin was 26.2 percent against 27.5 percent. Orders were the bright spot: net signed contracts rose to $2.81 billion and 2,834 units from $2.60 billion and 2,650 units, though backlog fell to $6.32 billion and 5,394 units from $6.84 billion and 6,063 units.
Toll has guided the third quarter to 2,600 to 2,700 deliveries at an average price of $965,000 to $985,000, an adjusted gross margin of 25.25 percent and SG&A at 10.0 percent of revenues, within a full-year frame of 10,400 to 10,700 deliveries and a 26.10 percent adjusted gross margin. Note that the quarterly adjusted margin guide sits well below the annual one, which requires a strong fourth quarter to reconcile. The timing is pointed, because Toll's numbers land in the middle of the week's housing data. NAHB's own release calendar puts the NAHB/Wells Fargo housing market index at 10:00 a.m. Eastern on Monday, August 17. The Census Bureau's new residential construction report, which carries July housing starts and building permits, is scheduled for Tuesday, August 18 at 8:30 a.m., the standard release time for that series. And the National Association of Realtors publishes its July pending home sales index - pending, not existing - at 10:00 a.m. that same morning. Two of the three housing prints will therefore already be on the tape before Toll releases that evening.
The macro frame around all of this is unusual and easy to misdescribe. The Federal Reserve is chaired by Kevin Warsh, and the July 28-29 FOMC held rates at 3.50 to 3.75 percent on a 9-3 vote in which the three dissenters wanted a quarter-point increase, not a cut. The contested direction in this cycle is upward. Minutes from that meeting are due Wednesday, August 19 at 2:00 p.m. Eastern, timing corroborated by IG's week-ahead calendar, which places them at 4:00 a.m. Thursday Australian eastern time. July CPI rose 0.1 percent on the month and 3.4 percent on the year, July producer prices were flat on the month and up 4.7 percent on the year, and the preliminary University of Michigan sentiment reading for August was 51.0 against a July final of 55.2.
Markets closed Friday, August 14 with the S&P 500 at 7,785.76, down 0.17 percent, the Nasdaq Composite at 26,729.16, down 0.28 percent, and the Dow Jones Industrial Average at 53,732.41, down 0.20 percent, while the Russell 2000 rose 0.51 percent to a record close of 3,068.42. On the week the S&P added 0.36 percent and the Russell 1.11 percent, while the Dow fell 0.56 percent. A small-cap record alongside a soft mega-cap tape is the kind of split that tends to be read as broadening rather than fragility, though one session settles neither, and the six companies above are a better test of that question than another quarter of comparable store sales. Nothing here is a recommendation, and none of these events has happened yet.
