FactSet Earned $2.12 per Share

This morning FactSet (FDS) reported fiscal Q2 earnings of $2.12 per share. That’s a healthy 17.1% increase over last year’s Q2. The consensus on Wall Street was for $2.06 per share. In the last CWS Market Review, I said I was looking for something between $2.08 and $2.11 per share, so FDS beat even optimistic forecasts.

Digging into the numbers, organic revenues increased 5.7% to $310.4 million. A key metric I watch is their adjusted operating margin. That fell from 33.1% in last year’s Q2 to 31.4% for this year. The company blamed negative foreign exchange. On the plus side, free cash flow rose more than 20% to $86.1 million.

An important metric for FDS is what the company calls “Annual Subscription Value” or ASV. At the end of Q2, that stood at $1.35 billion. Their “organic” ASV rose by 5.8%. That could be higher.

Like many companies, FDS was greatly helped by a lower tax rate. The company also approved adding $300 million to their current share buyback program.

FactSet stopped providing quarterly guidance but they still do for the full year. The company raised their 2018 guidance range for this by 10 cents at both ends. They now see full-year adjusted EPS between $8.35 and $8.55 per share.

FDS is down a bit in today’s trading, but i’s nothing big. Remember that FDS rallied nearly 15% for us from February 8 to March 20.

Posted by on March 27th, 2018 at 7:56 am


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