It's earnings, earnings, and more earnings on this Thursday.

Radnor-based Airgas said net sales for its third quarter rose 12 percent to $1.15B. Net earnings for industrial and medical gas distributor rose strongly to $72.3M, or 93 cents per share, from $55.8M, or 65 cents per share.

Sales and profits were also up sharply for Carpenter Technology. Q2 net sales for the maker of specialty steels and other alloys were $431.1M vs. $375.6M for the same quarter in 2010. Net income was $23.6M, or 52 cents per share, compared with $9.3M, or 21 cents per share.

Another local industrial company, Ametek, said it established company records for sales, operating income, operating margins, and earnings per share. (Notice a theme to these results today?) The Berwyn company said Q4 sales were up 13 percent to $762.8M. Net income was up 25 percent to $101.9M, or 63 cents per share.

Tons of companies are reporting earnings Wednesday, but I don't think any will be able to wrest the headlines away from Apple's eye-popping Q4 iProfits.

A $13 billion profit on revenue of $46 billion in one quarter (!) is almost oil industry-like -- so big, so rich, you think twice as you applaud it.

In fact, it seems that Apple may have been one company President Obama had in mind in his State of the Union speech Tuesday night when he talked about companies bringing jobs back home.

Given the New York Times' Sunday piece on how Apple came to source globally, it would seem unlikely that Apple would feel the need to change what it's doing, even with $97 billion in cash on its balance sheet. After all, the way Apple is clicking, the House that Jobs built acts as if it's built to last.

Closer to home, some Philadelphia-area companies must settle for less-stratospheric results.

Oaks-based SEI Investments reported net income of $44.4M, or 25 cents per shares, on revenues of $226.2 million. Both revenues and profits were down from Q4 2010 when it posted net income of $62.9M, or 33 cents per share, on revenues of $231.4M.

Exelon, the parent of Philadelphia's Peco, saw its Q4 net income rise to $606M, or 91 cents per shares, from $524M, or 79 cents per share. But the electric and gas utility missed analyst expectations.

Warmer than usual weather also held back results at Valley Forge's UGI. Net income of $87M, or 77 cents per share, for Q1 was down from $113M, or $1.01 per share, for the same quarter a year ago.

Bon-Ton Stores Inc. hired the head of the Lord & Taylor department-store chain to be its new chief executive.

Brendan L. Hoffman will join the York-based retailer that operates 276 department stores in 23 states under various regional names, including Elder-Beerman, Carson Pirie Scott and Bon-Ton.

Shares of Bon-Ton rose 13 percent in morning trading, up 42 cents to $3.65.

Hoffman will replace Bud Bergren as president and CEO of Bon-Ton. Bergren will become chairman of the chain, while current executive chairman, Tim Grumbacher, will leave that role but remain on the board.

Look for shares of InterDigital to fall sharply at the opening of the U.S. stock market Tuesday.

The King of Prussia wireless technology company ended a six-month strategic review by choosing to remain independent, having not received any bids for the entire company. InterDigital undertook the review, hiring investment bankers in July, following a flurry of patent-driven deals involving Google, Apple and other big tech firms.

Speculation that InterDigital's extensive portfolio of 19,500 patents would attract a rich bid had dragged its shares above $75 per share last August. Shares closed Monday at $44.45.

DuPont Co. reported flat earnings for Q4 with $373 million, or 40 cents per share. However, for the full year, the Wilmington chemical company said that it had record earnings of $3.5 billion, or $3.68 per share, for 2011, compared with $3.50 billion, or $3.28 per share, for 2010.

Many local companies will be reporting financial results for the last quarter of 2011 this week.

Here's a handy checklist of who intends to report when:

Tuesday: Air Products & Chemicals Inc., of Allentown; DuPont Co., of Wilmington

Wednesday: AmeriGas Partners L.P., of Valley Forge; Exelon Corp., of Chicago; Innovative Solutions & Support Inc., of Exton; SAP AG, of Walldorf, Germany; SEI Investments Co., of Oaks; TE Connectivity Ltd., of Schaffhausen, Switzerland; UGI Corp., of Valley Forge

Thursday: Airgas Inc., of Radnor; AmerisourceBergen Corp., of Valley Forge; Ametek Inc., of Berwyn; Carpenter Technology Corp., of Wyomissing; Destination Maternity Corp., of Philadelphia; DFC Global Corp., of Berwyn; Sunoco Logistics Partners L.P., of Philadelphia.

Manufacturing activity in the Philadelphia region expanded in January and more companies reported improving conditions in the labor market.

The widely watched Business Outlook Survey of the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia said the percentage of firms noting an increase in employment was higher than that for firms reporting a decrease -- 21 percent vs. 10 percent.

Still, "moderate" is the word the Philly Fed used for the pace of the expansion of the region's manufacturing sector.

Looking out six months, the future general activity index for January is at its highest level in 10 months and has risen for five consecutive months.

Malvern Federal Bancorp will alter its ownership structure from one involving a mutual holding company to a stock holding company.

It's a move typical of small banks. Malvern Federal Mutual Holding Co. now owns 55.5 percent of the outstanding shares of Malvern Federal Bancorp. Those two entities will merge, and new holding company created that will sell new shares.

Management said in a statement that the proceeds from the stock offering would "strengthen" the bank's capital levels.

Malvern Federal, which is based in Paoli, operates nine branches in Chester and Delaware Counties.

We're just at the start of earnings season for local companies. PNC Financial Services Group reported Q4 net income of $493 million, or 85 cents per share, compared with $834 million, or $1.55 per share, for the same quarter of 2010. The Pittsburgh bank holding company said total revenue was also down to $3.5 billion from $3.9 billion for Q4 2010

Worth reading today is a commentary on Fortune's website about all of the Monday morning quarterbacking over Kodak's imminent demise. As Doblin Inc. co-founder Larry Doblin writes, even innovation has fashions.

CliqSearch, a Center City technology firm, raised about $1 million from several private angel investors to support the launch of its online service to help people find local businesses.

Founded by Alex Pooyan Khorram, who grew up in Newtown Square, CliqSearch uses social network data, such as Facebook Likes, Twitter Followers and Foursquare Check-Ins, shared by friends and "friends of friends" to help prospective customers make purchasing decisions.

"We're social network agnostic," Khorram said.

He would not identify his investors, but did say that their backgrounds were in technology and telecommunications services.

In other financing news, Philadelphia's Osage Venture Partners was one of the investors in a $4 million round raised by a North Jersey IT company.

Identropy, of Moonachie, N.J., will use the money to fund growth of its outsourced IT security services. Used by more than 120 clients, Identropy's cloud-based "identity management" tools are aimed at companies that employ 1,000 to 20,000 people and need to control access to information and software tools.

Besides Osage, Milestone Venture Partners, of New York City, participated in the investment round.

With U.S. stock and bond markets closed on this federal holiday, the domestic news flow from the business world is thin.

So we turn to Germany where SAP AG said it plans to acquire datango AG, which provides "workforce performance support software." No terms were disclosed for this transaction expected to close in the first quarter.

Based in Berlin, datango was founded in 1999. SAP, which has North American headquarters in Newtown Square, said that datango will expand its offerings for education tools.

Meanwhile, Blue Bell-based Unisys Corp. is trumpeting another contract for its cloud-based information technology services. This time, California State University picked Unisys to help it provide administrative tasks to the students, faculty and staff at its 23 campuses.

Unisys had been hosting the university's databases and applications at a Salt Lake City, Utah data center. This initial contract, for four years until April 2016, moves into Unisys' private cloud-computing service.