FactSet Research Systems

The popular belief seems to be that FactSet (FDS) is somehow a proxy for bad news in money management. The company’s results, however, continue to upset that thesis.
For Q2, FDS just reported a sales increase of 22% and adjusted EPS rose from 52 cents to 62 cents. Breaking down to the decimals, that’s an increase of 20.4%, and it beat the Street by two cents a share.
The company also said that Q3 revenues would be between $145 million to $149 million which is higher than the Street’s estimate. Best of all, that assumes no money from Bear Stearns (which is a safe assumption).
The shares are up over 20% but it’s really just making up for a lot of lost ground.
This is from the earnings call:

Randy Hugen – Piper Jaffray Companies
Okay. And then, finally, was Bear Stearns a top 10 client?
Philip A. Hadley
No. Our largest client is less than 3% of our total ASV. And Bear Stearns was significantly less than 1%.
If you were to add some history to it, as similar in size as what Roberson Stevens was to us in the last cycle. It seems like every cycle one soldier goes down and that just happens to be the one in this cycle. Hopefully only one.

Posted by on March 18th, 2008 at 2:07 pm


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