Four Buy List Earnings Reports

After the closing bell, we had four Buy List earnings reports. Here’s a summary:

AFLAC ($AFL) actually reported results slightly before the closing bell, but it’s the same story we know well. The supplemental insurance company is doing very well businesswise but the yen is eating their profits. For Q1, AFLAC had operating earnings of $1.69 per share. The weak yen knocked off ten cents per share. Excluding currency, operating earnings were up 5.9% from a year ago.

Now for guidance. For Q2, AFLAC sees earnings ranging between $1.54 and $1.68 per share. That’s pretty good. Wall Street had been expecting $1.58. The downside is that AFLAC lowered their full-year guidance. The original range was $6.31 to $6.49 per share. Now it’s $6.06 to $6.40 per share. Those estimates are based on a yen/dollar rate between 100 and 105. The stock got a nice jump in the last few minutes of trading on Tuesday.

Now on to eBay ($EBAY) which gets a lot of attention on the Street. The company reported Q1 adjusted earnings of 70 cents per share which beat the Street by three cents per share. Officially, eBay lost $2.3 billion last quarter going by net earnings but that’s because they took a massive tax charge in order to repatriate foreign earnings.

For Q2, eBay sees earnings of 67 to 69 cents per share which was a tad below the Street’s consensus of 70 cents per share. Importantly, eBay reiterated their full-year guidance of $2.95 to $3.00 per share. Wall Street is at $2.99 per share. These numbers are pretty much what I expected, although the shares were down 4.3% in the after-hours market.

Express Scripts ($ESRX) reported Q1 earnings of 99 cents per share which was two cents below expectations. One troubling note is that they lowered their full-year guidance by six cents per share at each end. The new range is $4.82 to $4.94 per share, but that’s still year-over-year growth of 17% to 20%. The shares were down more than 5% in the after-hours market.

Fiserv ($FISV) may be the big star of this earnings season. For Q1, they made 82 cents per share which easily beat Wall Street’s estimates of 74 cents per share. Earnings were up 22% from a year ago while quarterly revenue was up 7.1% to $1.23 billion which also beat expectations. Fiserv reaffirmed full-year guidance of $3.28 to $3.37 per share which represents growth of 10% to 13%. The stock rallied 1.25% today, and was up another 3.1% in the after-hours market.

Posted by on April 29th, 2014 at 7:34 pm


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