Sally Beauty Holdings Shares Popped: What You Need to Know (SBH)

Sally Beauty Holdings Shares Popped: What You Need to Know

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Although we don't believe in timing the market or panicking over market movements, we do like to keep an eye on big changes -- just in case they're material to our investing thesis.

What: Shares of Sally Beauty Holdings (NYSE: SBH ) are looking a lot prettier this morning, rising as much as 18% after the company reported strong first-quarter results before the bell today.

So what: The international retailer and supplier of beauty products whisked past quarterly consensus earnings estimates which called for $0.19 on revenue of $770.6 million. Sally Beauty instead reported a profit of $0.22 on revenue of $793.6 million. The company attributed the earnings beat to solid organic growth, strong store expansion, increased gross margins, and healthy same-store sales increases.

Now what: From a bull's perspective, there really isn't much to pick apart. The company reported an extremely bullish jump in same-store sales in the first quarter over last year -- 6.4% compared to 3.7% -- and noted a 70-basis-point jump in gross margins. More importantly, revenue growth came in at 13%, a surprise for a company many analysts have pegged to grow in the mid-single digits. Still, bulls need to keep their eyes open. Sally Beauty does carry $1.6 billion in debt and saw a marked rise in inventory levels this quarter, which it did attribute to having more stores. This isn't something worth worrying about yet, but these are figures bear watching.

Interested in more info on Sally Beauty Holdings? Add it to your watchlist by clicking here.

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Fool contributor Sean Williams does not own shares in any companies mentioned in this article. You can follow him on CAPS under the screen name TMFUltraLong.

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