• Kraft (NYSE:KFT) reported third quarter earnings of 55 cents a share on revenues of $9.8 billion, beating Zacks estimates of 48 cents, but slightly below revenue projections of $10.24 billion

• MedcoHealth Solutions (NYSE:MHS) reported third quarter earnings of 75 cents ex-items, 4 cents above Zacks estimates, on revenues of $14.80 billion, up from estimates of $14.71 billion

• Miller Tabek upgraded entertainment stocks such as CBS (NYSE:CBS), Entravision (NYSE:EVC), News Corp. (NASDAQ:NWS), Viacom (NYSE:VIA.B), and Disney (NYSE:DIS) from "neutral" to "buy"

• Disney (NYSE:DIS) said China approved its plans for a $3.5 billion theme park in Shanghai, set to open in 2014 at the earliest

• Time Warner (NYSE:TWX) reported third quarter earnings of 61 cents a share, ahead of Zacks estimates of 52 cents.  Revenue of $7.14 billion was almost inline with Zacks estimates.  The firm said it sees full-year earnings of at least $2.05

• Garmin (NASDAQ:GRMN) reported third quarter earnings

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BioScrip, Inc. (BIOS) reported third-quarter earnings of 14 cents per share, beating the Zacks Consensus Estimate of 10 cents. The company reported earnings of 6 cents in the year-ago period. Although earnings were better than expected, revenues declined 7.2% to $333.5 million. While the specialty business contributed $279 million to revenues, the pharmacy benefit management (PBM) business posted revenues of $54.5 million.   The decline in revenues was mainly due to the elimination of the Medicare Competitive Acquisition Program and the termination of the United Health Group organ transplant and HIV/AIDS contracts. This was partially offset by increased sales of higher margin infusion therapies and other specialty sales.   The company reported a sequential growth of 3% in specialty sales with several therapeutic areas like iron overload, multiple sclerosis (MS), oncology and infusion therapies recording double digit growth from the year-ago period. The oral oncology business should continue ...

The ETF Innovators [ETFI] Global Healthcare Cost Containment Index profiled in the accompanying table is updated and expanded to include more companies from my recent Analysis of Generic Drug Companies from India. The index is structured to include companies with market caps between $150M-$60B, which are involved in producing generic healthcare products such as generic drugs and pharmacy benefit managers which do not have retail store and insurance components. The Top 10 Rated companies are sorted by market cap, with Taro Pharma (TAROF) involved in litigation with India's top generic drug company by market cap, Sun Pharma (524715), to fend off a tender offer which Taro claims undervalues the company. Momenta Pharma (MNTA) and Novartis (NVS) expect to launch a ...

This is a reprint of my 25 August 2008 RealMoney column.

Owens & Minor (OMI) is the nation’s leading distributor of medical and surgical supplies to the acute-care market. It’s also a health care supply-chain management company and a national direct-to-consumer supplier of testing and monitoring supplies for diabetics.

Most of its revenue is derived from fees based on a percentage of the value of products distributed, but 32% of its revenue is contracted on the basis of the company’s costs. Its primary competitor in medical/surgical distribution is Cardinal Health (CAH) . In the direct-to-consumer diabetes supply business, its largest competitor is Liberty Medical, a subsidiary of MedcoHealth Solutions (MHS) .

Owens & Minor has been establishing a track record of earnings surprises, beating analysts’ estimates in each of the last three quarters. Analysts are beginning to reward the company with higher full-year 2008 and 2009 estimates, which now stand at

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