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 Teradata Corporation (TDC 0.09%) plunged 10% Thursday after the company released solid first-quarter results, but followed with weaker-than-expected guidance.
So what: Quarterly revenue came in at $628 million, which translated to earnings of $0.54 per share. Analysts, on average, had expected earnings of just $0.47 per share on sales of $614.6 million.
Teradata also expects full-year 2014 sales "at the lower end" of its previous $2.77 billion to $2.88 billion range, which should result in earnings per share of $2.85 to $3.00. Wall Street went into the report hoping for slightly higher 2014 earnings of $2.93 per share on sales of $2.83 billion.
Now what: The guidance miss wasn't that significant, so today's drop may well be an overreaction, and shares look admittedly cheap trading around 12 times next year's expected earnings. In the end, I think shares of Teradata look attractive right now from a long-term perspective.
