Earnings from Smucker and Moody’s

We had two earnings reports on Friday. JM Smucker (SJM) reported fiscal Q3 earnings of $2 per share. That’s down from $2.05 per share a year ago but it matched Wall Street’s forecast. Quarterly sales fell 5%.

“Accelerating the realization of synergies and a concentrated effort to reduce costs across the Company support our ability to deliver bottom-line growth, despite the top-line softness in our business and across the industry,” said Mark Smucker, Chief Executive Officer. “We are also aggressively pursuing a variety of growth opportunities. During the quarter, we launched our Nature’s Recipe® premium pet food brand into grocery and mass merchandise outlets. In addition, we announced plans to build a new manufacturing facility to support growth for our Smucker’s® Uncrustables® frozen sandwiches. Behind these and other initiatives, we remain confident in achieving our long-term growth objectives and continuously enhancing shareholder value.”

The bad news is that Smucker lowered the high-end of their full-year EPS forecast by a nickel per share. The company now sees 2017 earnings ranging between $7.60 to $7.70 per share.

Shares of SJM dropped sharply at the open, but made for a lot of lost ground during the day. By the closing bell, the stock lost 1.37%.

Also on Friday, Moody’s (MCO) said that it earned $1.23 per share for Q4. That was nine cents better than expectations. Quarterly revenues rose 8.8% to $942.1 million, which also beat expectations.

For 2017, Moody’s said they expect earnings between $5 and $5.15 per share, which doesn’t include a 15-cent per share accounting benefit. Wall Street had been expecting $5.07 per share. For 2016, Moody’s made $4.81 per share.

Shares of MCO gained 2.4% on Friday.

Posted by on February 18th, 2017 at 3:53 pm


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