TORONTO (Reuters) - Canada's second-quarter earnings period is expected to bring few surprises when results start to flood in this week, but some cash-rich companies might reward investors with a sprinkling of dividend hikes."I expect earnings to be good. I don't see any reason to think that they wouldn't be," said Julie Brough, a senior adviser at Morgan, Meighen and Associates.

"I think it will be a very solid quarter. I wouldn't say, exceptional, but I think it will be solid."

A good indicator of the prospects for Canada are earnings expectations for New York's closely watched S&P 500 index, whose companies are expected to post an average earnings increase of about 5.6 percent, according to Reuters Estimates.

There is no reason to believe that the Toronto Stock Exchange's top companies cannot report results that are at least equal to that, analysts said.

Some of the optimism stems from the lack of warnings or "pre-announcements" in the weeks leading up to the earnings parade. Companies will often signal markets if they know their earnings won't meet expectations.

But few have provided such direction and that bodes well for the results.

"I think earnings will meet expectations. There have been very few pre-announcements, which tends to be good," said Ian Nakamoto, director of research at MacDougall, MacDougall and MacTier.

"It should be good to slightly better, but I don't expect gangbuster earnings."

Some of the Toronto market's biggest companies, including Canadian National Railway, EnCana Corp., Nova Chemicals and Petro-Canada, are set to release results over the next two weeks.

Buoyant commodity prices are likely to have enhanced the results of a number of the market's big companies, giving its key S&P/TSX composite index a good chance of jumping over 15,000 for the first time.

The TSX closed at 14,582.87 on Friday.

Metals companies are tapped to lead the way higher, helped by lofty prices for commodities such as copper, lead and zinc, as well as gold prices, which have been pushing toward the $700 an ounce level.