First, we need to see *exactly* what your @$row array elements contain. Use Data::Dumper!

use Data::Dumper;
$Data::Dumper::Useqq = 1;
foreach my $ts ($te->table_states) {
  foreach my $row ($ts->rows) {
    print Dumper $row;
  }
}
[download]

Output:

$VAR1 = [
          "\n\t\tACME Communications, Inc.\n\t\t\n\t",
          "\n\t\t\n\t\tACME\n\t",
          "\n\t\t-\$0.43\n\t",
          "\n\n\t\n\t\t\240\n\t\t-\$0.67\n\t\t\n\t\n\n\t"
        ];
...
$VAR1 = [
          "\n\t\tJP Realty Inc.\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t*\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t",
          "\n\t\t\n\t\tJPR\n\t",
          "\n\t\t\$0.64\n\t",
          "\n\n\t\n\t\t\240\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\n\n\t"
        ];
...
[download]

Notice that there are:

1. leading and trailing newlines and tabs,
2. embedded newlines and tabs ( in JP Realty Inc. .... * ),
3. non-breaking spaces (  in HTML; translated by TableExtract to \240 octal or \xA0 hex).

For your purposes, the simplest solution is:

1. translate non-breaking spaces, tabs, newlines, and regular spaces into regular spaces, "squeezing" any groups of them into a single space,
2. removing the remaining leading and trailing whitespace.

This code does does exactly that:

foreach (@$row) {
  tr{ \t\n\xA0}{ }s;
  s{^\s+}{};
  s{\s+$}{};
}
[download]

The final program (after a bandwidth-saving change) looks like this:

#!/usr/bin/perl
use warnings;
use strict;
use LWP::Simple;
use HTML::TableExtract;

my $file = 'earnings.dat';
my $url  = 
"http://www.earnings.com/fin/earnListing.jsp?date=2003-05-04";

# Be kind to the website, at least during testing!
# Get the $url only when $file is missing or more than 1 day old.
mirror($url, $file) unless -e $file or -M $file > 1;

# Slurp $file into $content.
my $content = do {
 local (*F, $/);
 open F, $file or die;
 <F>;
};

my $te = HTML::TableExtract->new(
  headers => [qw(Company Symbol Estimate Actual)],
);

$te->parse($content);

#use Data::Dumper;
#$Data::Dumper::Useqq = 1;

# Examine all matching tables
foreach my $ts ($te->table_states) {
  print "Table (", join(',', $ts->coords), "):\n";
  foreach my $row ($ts->rows) {
     foreach (@$row) {
       tr{ \t\n\xA0}{ }s;
       s{^\s+}{};
       s{\s+$}{};
     }
#    print Dumper $row;
    print join(',', @$row), "\n";
  }
}
[download]

You may want to change your join to use tab instead of comma, since some of the company names contain commas.

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