Thursday’s earnings round-up underlines starkly different performances at Canadian and U.S. companies, with U.S. stock futures pointed lower as a slew of companies issued weak earnings.

Freddie Mac reported early Thursday that its fourth-quarter loss widened to US$2.45 billion. The company said it expects continued weakness in the U.S. housing market.

Sears Holdings nearly halved its fiscal fourth-quarter net income, reflecting increased markdowns as the weakening economy and increasing competition continued to hurt sales.

Sprint Nextel swung to a huge fourth-quarter net loss as the company wrote off most of the purchase price of its 2005 acquisition of Nextel.

In today’s Canadian earnings news, TD Bank Financial Group reported a 5% increase in its first-quarter income on as raised its dividend.

The bank reported net income of $970 million, or $1.33 a share, compared with $921 million, or $1.26 a share, in the same quarter of the previous year.

TD bumped up its quarterly dividend by 2¢ to 59¢ a share.

Canadian Natural Resources Ltd. said its fourth-quarter profit jumped 155% to $798 million, from a year-ago $313 million, as the major oil and gas company’s annual cash flow rose 26% Earnings for the quarter ended Dec. 31, 2007, rose to $1.48 per share from 58¢.

Talisman Energy Inc. reported its fourth-quarter profit rose to $656 million from a year-earlier $598 million. Earnings for the quarter ended Dec. 31, 2007, were 64¢ a share, compared with 55¢ a share a year ago.

The Canadian dollar opened at US102.32¢, up about one-third of a cent from Wednesday’s close.

There are no major economic releases from Statistics Canada today.

South of the border, the U.S. government left untouched its estimate for economic performance at the end of 2007, reporting the same, limp rate of growth as stronger overseas sales were offset by a deepening housing slump.

Gross domestic product rose at an unrevised 0.6% annual rate October through December, the U.S. Commerce Department reported today in its second estimate of fourth-quarter GDP, much slower than the third-quarter’s 4.9% rise.

Crude for April delivery lost 39¢ to US$99.25 a barrel in electronic trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange.

In Tokyo, the Nikkei closed down 0.75%. In Europe, London’s FTSE 100 fell 1.19%, Paris’s CAC 40 lost 1.25% and Frankfurt’s DAX dropped 1.13%.

Gold and base metal issues kept Toronto stocks from tumbling Wednesday, despite weakness in the financials and technology sectors.

The S&P/TSX Composite index closed down 18.63 points, or 0.14%, at 13,778.38.

The junior S&P/TSX Venture composite index closed up 38.97 points, or 1.44%, at 2,754.46.

In New York, the Dow Jones industrial average closed up 9.36 points, or 0.07%, at 12,694.28.

The S&P 500 closed flat at 1,380.02, down 1.27 points, or 0.09%.

The tech-heavy Nasdaq closed up 8.79 points, or 0.37%, at 2,353.78.