Harris Reports Great Earnings

This morning, Harris Corp. ($HRS) reported fiscal fourth-quarter earnings of $1.41 per share which was 26 cents better than expectations. That’s a huge beat. Quarterly revenue dropped 5.3% to $1.36 billion which still topped estimates of $1.31 billion.

Harris also had very good guidance for next year. For fiscal 2014, which ends in June of 2014, Harris sees earnings ranging between $4.65 to $4.85 per share on revenues of $4.95 to $5.05 billion. The Street had been expecting earnings of $4.62 per share on revenues of $5.03 billion. For the year, Harris earned $4.90 per share compared with $5.20 per share last year. Much of the decline was due to the government sequester.

Fourth quarter results were solid in a tough government spending environment,” said William M. Brown, president and chief executive officer. “Performance benefited from our commitment to operational excellence and ongoing cost-reduction efforts, including restructuring actions announced in April that were executed faster than expected and generated fourth quarter cost savings. As we enter fiscal 2014, we now expect that restructuring and other actions will generate net annualized cost savings of approximately $60 million.”

“We were particularly encouraged by the strong new orders momentum in the international tactical radio market. With a tactical book-to-bill of 1.49 and greater than one in both international and U.S. markets, tactical backlog increased substantially in the fourth quarter.”

Harris is another good example of a high-quality stock delivering results after sluggish performance of its stock. Shares of Harris are only up 8% YTD which makes it one of the poorer performers on our Buy List. But what hasn’t changed is that it’s still a very well-run outfit.

Posted by on July 30th, 2013 at 9:05 am


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