Earnings from Cerner and Torchmark

After the close, Cerner (CERN) announced Q2 earnings of 66 cents per share. That beat the Street by two cents per share. The company said that bookings came in at $1.432 billion which was the high end of their range. Revenue rose 5% to $1.431 billion. That was in line with Cerner’s expectations.

“I am pleased with our financial results, which were in line with our expectations,” said Brent Shafer, Chairman and CEO, Cerner. “In addition to delivering solid quarterly operating results, we made good progress on the early stages of our transformation and positioning Cerner for long-term profitable growth. Cerner has played a key role in digitizing health care, and we believe our next era of growth will be driven by the tremendous opportunity related to helping our clients drive a higher order of benefits from this digitization.”

Now for guidance. For Q3, Cerner expects revenue between $1.405 billion and $1.455 billion, and full-year revenue between $5.650 billion and $5.850 billion.

For Q2, Cerner expects earnings between 65 and 67 cents per share. Wall Street had been expecting 69 cents per share. Cerner sees full-year earnings between $2.64 and $2.72 per share. That’s the same as the previous guidance. The Street was at $2.67 per share.

Regarding Torchmark (TMK), first, the big news: the company is changing its name to Globe Life Inc. effective August 8, 2019. The new symbol will be GL.

The name change is part of a brand alignment strategy which will enhance the Company’s ability to build name recognition with potential customers and agent recruits through use of a single brand. The underwriting companies owned by the Parent Company will continue to exist as legal entities, but over a period of time will go to market under the Globe Life name to leverage branding initiatives implemented at Globe Life And Accident Insurance Company in recent years.

For Q2, Torchmark reported earnings of $1.67 per share. That was two cents per share above the Street.

Here are some highlights from the quarter:

Net income as an ROE was 12.3%. Net operating income as an ROE excluding net unrealized gains on fixed maturities was 14.6%.

Life underwriting margin at American Income Exclusive Agency and Globe Life Direct Response both increased over the year-ago quarter by 9%.

Health underwriting margin at Family Heritage Exclusive Agency increased over the year-ago quarter by 14%.

Life premiums increased over the year-ago quarter by 7% at American Income Exclusive Agency and health premiums increased over the year-ago quarter by 8% at Family Heritage Exclusive Agency.

Net health sales increased over the year-ago quarter by 14%.

979,215 shares of common stock were repurchased during the quarter.

For the year, Torchmark projects net operating income per share will be between $6.67 to $6.77.

Posted by on July 24th, 2019 at 4:16 pm


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