Good Earnings for Stryker and eBay

After the closing bell, we got two more Buy List earnings reports.

Stryker ($SYK) beat by one penny per share.

U.S. orthopedic implant maker Stryker Corp on Wednesday said quarterly net profit rose 43 percent, driven by increased sales in its reconstructive and neurotechnology divisions as well as lower taxes.

The company reported fourth-quarter net earnings of $386 million, or $1.01 per share, compared with $270 million, or 71 cents a share a year earlier. Net sales for the quarter rose 5.6 percent to $2.47 billion.

Excluding items such as product recall and acquisition charges, Stryker earned $1.23 per share. Wall Street analysts, on average, expected $1.22 per share, according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S.

Stryker said its effective tax rate in the latest quarter was 10.3 percent, compared with 24.6 percent in fourth quarter 2012.

For full-year 2014, the company projected organic sales growth of between 4.5 percent and 6 percent.

For all of 2013, Stryker earned $4.23 per share. The company sees earnings between $4.75 to $4.90 per share for 2014. Wall Street had been expecting $4.63 per share.

ebay ($EBAY) also beat by one penny per share and it drew some interesting comments from Carl Icahn.

EBay Inc. on Wednesday reported a fourth-quarter profit of $850 million, or 65 cents a share, on revenue of $4.5 billion, compared with earnings of $751 million, or 57 cents a share, on $3.99 billion in sales in the year-ago period.

Excluding one-time items, eBay would have earned 81 cents a share. Analysts surveyed by FactSet had forecast eBay to earn 80 cents a share on $4.55 billion in sales.

Additionally, eBay said it authorized an additional $5 billion stock repurchase program.

EBay also said that it received a proposal from activist investor Carl Icahn seeking to spin off PayPal as a separate company, and that Icahn is nominating two of his employees for positions on eBay’s board of directors. EBay shares rose 8% in after-hours trading following the slate of announcements.

Posted by on January 22nd, 2014 at 4:53 pm


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