CA Technologies Posts Huge Earnings, Quintuples Dividend

Wow, CA Technologies ($CA) knocked the cover off the ball. The stock is up 17% in the after-hours market, and that’s on top of rising 1.69% today.

For fiscal Q3, CA earned 65 cents per share, 11 cents more than Wall Street’s estimate. The company is also raising its annual dividend five-fold. Quarterly revenue came in at $1.263 billion compared with Wall Street’s estimate of $1.21 billion.

CA also raised its 2012 EPS guidance. The company now sees 2012 earnings (ending March 31st) ranging between $2.21 and $2.25 per share. The old range was $2.13 to $2.18 per share. Wall Street had been expecting $2.15 per share.

Income from continuing operations rose 34 percent to $263 million, or 54 cents a share, from $196 million, or 38 cents a year earlier, the company, which operates as CA Technologies, said today in a statement. Excluding some items, profit was 65 cents, beating the 54-cent average estimate of analysts surveyed by Bloomberg.

Revenue rose 10 percent to $1.26 billion, exceeding analysts’ $1.21 billion estimate. Chief Executive Officer Bill McCracken has spent about $1.8 billion on acquisitions in recent years as he seeks to lessen the Islandia, New York-based company’s dependence on mainframe products and expand in technology security and management, including cloud software.

For the fiscal year ending March 31, CA said sales will rise 6 percent, the high end of its prior range. The company raised its forecast for adjusted earnings to $2.21 to $2.25 from $2.13 to $2.18.

CA Technologies will return $2.5 billion to shareholders by March 31, 2014, by increasing its annual dividend to $1 from 20 cents, and repurchasing $1.5 billion of stock, including about $230 million remaining under its existing authorization.

CA is hiking its annual dividend from 20 cents per share to $1.00 per share.

Posted by on January 24th, 2012 at 6:00 pm


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