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• CMG 75% Rate It
• GOOG 87% Rate It
• MCD 83% Rate It
• MSFT 82% Rate It
• PG 100% Rate It

At last, some good earnings news.

Procter & Gamble ( PG ) easily beat forecasts for its fiscal first-quarter earnings today, pushing the stock above $70 a share for the first time since September 2008.

The company's core earnings of $1.06 per share exceeded its own estimates of 97 cents a share. That was up five cents from the $1.01 per share in core earnings P&G brought in a year ago.

However, core earnings don't take into account unfavorable foreign exchange rates weighing on the company's profits. When adding in the financial hit P&G took due to exchange rates, earnings were down 6.9% from a year ago and revenue declined 4%. Net sales for the quarter also slipped 3.7%.

Fortunately for P&G, investors chose to focus on the core earnings. That was enough to push the stock up nearly 3% - a sizable one-day gain for a stock that, until today, had traded in the same $58-to-$69 range for the past three years.

In an earnings season marred by high-profile misses from the likes of Google ( GOOG ), Microsoft ( MSFT ), McDonald's ( MCD ) and Chipotle ( CMG ) , Procter & Gamble's beat stands as a much-needed bright spot - even if the earnings were technically down from a year ago.

*Disclosure: I personally own shares of Procter & Gamble.

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