Earnings in focus for US stocks Earnings were still in focus on Friday as the S&P 500 finished the day nearly unchanged and Starbucks shares rose after the company reported revenue and net income that beat expectations. The coffee shop chain was up 7.6 per cent to $73.36 after it said that global sales rose 13.3 per cent, but that it continued to struggle with profitability in some parts of the world. Starbucks has been criticised for not paying taxes in the UK. The company has said that it has been unable to turn a profit due to mistakes in its expansion plans. The Seattle-based company is up 36.8 per cent on the year to date. Elsewhere on Friday, online travel company Expedia reported earnings per share that broadly missed estimates. Shares were off 27.4 per cent to $47.20. Competition from other discount travel sites has squeezed the company's revenue and forced it to spend more on advertising. Computer game developer Activision Blizzard rose 15 per cent to $17.46 on news that the company has agreed to buy 429m of its shares from French media company Vivendi. An investment company operated by Activision's chief executive and its co-chairman will separately buy 172m shares, also from Vivendi. Company earnings were the focal point for the week, as investors drove most trading in some of the largest US brands. The S&P 500 rallied late on Friday to finish flat, leaving the benchmark index down fractionally for its first weekly loss since a sell-off in June was triggered by concerns over near-term plans from the Federal Reserve to taper the quantitative easing programme. Some high profile earnings reports sent shares sharply higher. Tech stocks fared somewhat better than the average, helping the Nasdaq to add 0.7 per cent on the week at 3,613.16. Apple, the heaviest-weighted stock on the Nasdaq, rose 3.8 per cent on the week after reporting iPhone sales that stymied fears about demand in the smartphone market. Social network Facebook was another tech standout, with shares jumping 31.4 per cent after a midweek earnings report showed growth in advertiser numbers and mobile ad revenue. Homebuilders, which have been among the best performing stocks in the past 12 months, fell sharply over the week on worse than expected order expectations. DR Horton and PulteGroup, the two largest US homebuilders, were off 12.4 and 15.5 per cent respectively, as investors began to factor in rising interest rates on the US housing market. The Dow Jones Industrial Average up 0.1 per cent to 15,558.83 on the week, with US blue-chips AT&T and Caterpillar both declining on weak earnings. AT&T fell 0.6 per cent as it reported net income that missed expectations and customer growth that lagged behind rival Verizon. Construction equipment maker Caterpillar declined 4.2 per cent to $82.06 on concerns about the global economy. The company also cut its full-year guidance. With the earnings season just past the halfway mark, results so far have been tepid. Of the 52 per cent of companies that have reported revenue, 44 per cent have missed expectations, according to data from Thomson Reuters. In a typical quarter, only 38 per cent miss revenue projections. The combination of elevated stock prices and concerns about the US economy have pushed investors to focus on revenue growth and forward guidance. Many companies have focused on improving margins to boost earnings numbers, a move that can only help so much. To take another sustained move upward in this very long bull market . . . quality of earnings is going to start to be important. We're going to start needing to see some top line growth," said Uri Landesman, president of Platinum Partners, a New York-based hedge fund. Cost-cutting, financial engineering, I don't think companies are going to get paid for that going forward from here. They're going to need to show some legitimate growth.