Snapshots change when they become moving pictures.
Shares of Shutterfly
Wall Street can be fickle that way.
The report itself was solid. Revenue soared 60% to $91.3 million. Yes, Shutterfly posted a loss -- this is the slow time of the year for a highly seasonal business -- but the deficit of $0.29 a share was smaller than the $0.32-a-share hit that the market was expecting.
Shuttefly's top line was padded by last year's acquisition of high-end personalized invitations, greeting cards, and stationery products specialist Tiny Prints. Wall Street knew that, yet the pros were still only targeting quarterly revenue of $84.9 million.
The market was impressed, and the analysts at R.W. Baird raised their price target on the stock from $32 to $40.
Shutterfly's guidance is also decent, with the company moving its top-line outlook higher after emerging as the only bidder for Eastman Kodak's (OTC: EKDKQ) Kodak Gallery business.
This should be a good time for Shutterfly. In a world of Facebook photo-sharing and Instagram, many shutterbug sites are either closing down or cashing out on the cheap. Shutterfly was alone in taking on Kodak Gallery's content and accounts. American Greetings
Shutterfly makes sharing snapshots work through e-commerce. We're not talking about traditional photofinishing, as prints make up less than $15 million of Shutterfly's revenue. The company offers a wide array of personalized products, in line with what Vistaprint
Shuttefly and Vistaprint remain very profitable and are growing their net sales at double-digit clips. The sectors may not be pretty, but there's something to be said about a company that can flourish in an unloved niche.
Digital future
Smartphones with good cameras are giving shutterbugs new ways to express themselves wirelessly. Even though the next trillion-dollar revolution will be in mobile, there will be some surprising winners. A free special report will get you up to speed