Earnings on Tap: Abbott, Apollo Group, U.S. Bancorp

Drug and medical-device company  Abbott Laboratories (ABT) is slated to report quarterly earnings before the bell Wednesday. Analysts on average expect the firm to post earnings of $1.17 per share, compared with $1.05 (excluding one-time charges) in the year-ago quarter.

Analysts and shareholders will be interested to learn whether sales for its stent products picked up following the exit of  Johnson & Johnson (JNJ) from the business. Sales of the firm's blockbuster drug Humira will also be in focus.

Abbott shares have outperformed the broader indexes, having risen about 10% year-to-date, but they are still trading at an attractive price compared with Morningstar's fair value estimate of $68 a share.

Private education provider  Apollo Group  also posts results before the market open. A poll of Wall Street analysts expects the firm will report EPS of $0.93, compared with $1.31 in the prior-year quarter.

Morningstar analyst Pete Wahlstrom believes for-profit education firms have faced various industry tailwinds due to the soft economic environment (during which displaced workers tend to seek more education) and more access to online education, but also notes that the "golden age" is over for these firms as regulatory scrutiny of the sector is forcing participants to react and adapt to potentially game-changing rules.

"Stocks in our for-profit education coverage universe generally trade at steep discounts to their respective fair value estimates," Wahlstrom notes, "though we have said for some time that the environment could get far worse before it improves. ... We still believe that current stock prices meaningfully discount the strength of normalized cash flow generation, but we would await trough margins and improvement in new student enrollments before considering an investment in this sector."

 U.S. Bancorp (USB) is also slated to announce numbers before the bell. The Street expects the financial-services firm to post EPS of $0.61, as opposed to $0.46 in the same quarter last year.

The bank has beaten analyst forecasts and reported a revenue increase for four straight quarters now. The shares are also trading in 4-star territory compared with Morningstar's fair value estimate of $31.

Morningstar analysts view the company favorably. The firm's "large fee-based businesses, conservative underwriting, and management's ability to recognize opportunity during crisis set the company apart from its peers," says the U.S. Bancorp Analyst Report. "In our opinion, its shareholders are in one of the best positions to profit from the crisis, rather than be a victim of it."