Check Point Software Earned $2.17 per Share

There’s been a lot of news this morning. Let’s start with Check Point Software (CHKP). The company reported earnings of $2.17 per share. That beat Wall Street’s consensus by six cents per share. For the same quarter one year before, Check Point made $2.02 per share. Sales rose 4% to $564 million. Wall Street had been expecting revenue of $555.4 million.

“Business in our fourth quarter grew across all focus areas including cloud, network and remote access security,” Chief Executive Gil Shwed said.

“The global pandemic drove the new normal, a hybrid work environment and accelerated digital transformation that created security challenges across all types of organizations … Delivering cyber security is now more critical than ever.”

Check Point said it bought back 2.7 million shares in the quarter worth $323 million as part of its share repurchase program.

Check Point sees Q1 ranging between $1.45 and $1.55 per share. Consensus was $1.51 per share. For the whole year, Check Point expects $6.45 to $6.85 per share. Consensus was $6.92 per share. The stock is down about 8% this morning.

The other big news is that Sherwin-Williams (SHW) said it will split its stock three-for-one. This means shareholders will get three times as many shares, but the share price will fall by two thirds.

Each Sherwin-Williams shareholder of record at the close of business on March 23, 2021 will receive two additional common shares for each then-held common share, to be distributed after close of trading on March 31, 2021. Trading of Sherwin-Williams common shares will begin on a stock split-adjusted basis on April 1, 2021.

Also this morning, ADP said that private payrolls grew by 174,000 jobs last month. That beat estimates of 45,000. The real test comes on Friday when the government releases the official jobs report. The current consensus is for a gain of 50,000 jobs.

Posted by on February 3rd, 2021 at 9:49 am


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