Wright Express Earns 91 Cents Per Share

In last week’s CWS Market Review, I said that Wright Express ($WXS) “is our best candidate for an earnings beat” this week. The company came through by earning 91 cents per share which was a penny better than Wall Street’s consensus. Wright had told us to expect earnings between 87 cents and 93 cents per share.

The stock is getting dinged today because Wright’s guidance for Q2 isn’t as much as Wall Street wanted. Wright sees Q2 earnings ranging between 92 cents and 98 cents per share while Wall Street had been expecting earnings of $1.08 per share.

“Our performance in the first quarter, where we achieved revenue growth of 17% and adjusted net income growth of 22%, reflected our continued execution against our three-pronged growth strategy,” commented Michael Dubyak, Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer. “During the quarter we made greater progress in expanding our core fleet business, with new business wins driving organic growth. Furthermore, we saw strong performance from our corporate charge card product and took additional steps to capitalize on increasing international market acceptance to accelerate the growth of this successful product. Looking ahead, with positive momentum in the business we feel optimistic about the long-term direction of our business given the growth platforms we have established.”

First Quarter 2012 Performance Metrics

• Average number of vehicles serviced worldwide was approximately 6.7 million, an increase of 13% from the first quarter of 2011.

• Total fuel transactions processed increased 8% from the first quarter of 2011 to 79.3 million. Payment processing transactions increased 3% to 60.6 million; transaction processing transactions increased 31% to 18.7 million.

• Average expenditure per domestic payment processing transaction increased 13% from the first quarter of 2011 to $73.29.

• Domestic retail fuel price increased 10% to $3.72 per gallon from $3.38 per gallon in the first quarter of 2011.

• Total corporate card purchase volume grew 52% to $2.2 billion, from $1.4 billion for the first quarter of 2011.

Today’s pullback is unfortunate, but the key for investors is that Wright has reiterated its full-year guidance of $4.10 to $4.30 per share. That is by far the most important news today. Wright also boosted its full-year revenue guidance to a range of $602 million to $617 million. The old range was $590 million and $610 million.

Posted by on May 2nd, 2012 at 12:40 pm


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