articuno
Long underline. I think there will be structure, meaning, or parallelism issues.
A: Regarding structure, there's a subject and a verb. I don't see any issues, so I'll look at B
B: Company is singular
C: Meaning issue. The report didn't surpass expectations.
D: This sequence looks off. I think it's because of the use ", and" that makes it seem there are three items being discussed. There are only two items: reported and announced.
E: The firm didn't surpass estimates. The earnings surpassed estimates.
My selection: Choice A.
Hello
articuno,
You have done good quick analysis of this official sentence. This one should not take too long to solve. And you have done a good job with this one. Keep it up.
However, the reason that you have presented to reject Choice D is not correct as there is no
comma + and in this choice.
I have seen that many posters in this thread have rejected Choice D for wordiness. Choice D has very deterministic errors.
i. Use of
while is incorrect in the context of this sentence because the company did not do the action of reporting and announcing together.
ii. Use of comma + verb-ing modifier
announcing… is incorrect because this choice enforces the cause-and-effect relationship between reporting the strong earnings and announcing the price cuts. Per the original sentence, these two are independent actions by the computer company. Hence, this forced cause-and-effect relationship changes the meaning of the sentence.
iii.
Increasing sales did not surpass
Wall Street's estimates. Per the original sentence,
second-quarter earnings did so.
iv. Use of simple present tense verb
surpass is incorrect. This choice says that
the first in a series of price cuts were announced to increase sales. So these sales are yet to surpass the estimates of Wall Street.
Hope this helps.

Thanks.
Shraddha