I came across a Reuters article today discussing the Itron (ITRI) earnings report tomorrow and they believe (along with a few analysts) that Itron will report poor results tomorrow after the bell due to a cut back on spending from utilities, but are bullish longer term.  I would like nothing more than for Itron to miss by a wide margin tomorrow so that I can continue to add to a long term position at a lower price.  As a momentum trader that’s not generally my strategy, but I’m a big believer that the long term picture for Itron is bright.. very bright.  Any weakness now is an opportunity.  Now that the stimulus funds have been dished out for smart grid projects, many of these utilities will now move forward with their projects over the next few years and Itron will be a big beneficiary of this spending.

In the article they state that Deutsche Bank analyst Carter Shoop expects the company to report profit below expectations because increasing deployments of advanced metering infrastructure won’t be enough to offset weak sales of advanced, automated meters.  Vijay Singh of JANCO says that the industry is in a state of flux in the near term and that stimulus funds will flow slowly to projects.  However, he sees more visibility in the 2nd half of next year.  With the market generally looking ahead 3 – 6 months, I think we can really start to see Itron (ITRI) stock ramping up in early 2010.  First things first though, let’s see just how bad this quarter is and how traders respond.  The 54 – 55 level is a key level of support should the stock sell off Thursday morning.