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 Trina Solar Limited (NYSE: TSL) jumped 29% Wednesday after the photovoltaic solar specialist released better-than-expected first quarter earnings.
So what: Quarterly revenue fell 15.4% year-over-year to $444.9 million, which translated to net income of $26.5 million, or $0.37 per diluted American depositary share. Analysts, on average, were expecting Trina Solar to turn in earnings of just $0.03 per share on higher sales of $460.78 million.
Now what: Trina Solar chairman and CEO Jifan Gao explained, "We remain focused on maintaining profitable growth as opposed to pursuing volume growth alone. By employing this strategy, we increased our gross margin to 20.6% this quarter, a significant improvement from the previous quarter's 15.1%. This improvement underpinned a net income increase of 73.5% quarter-over-quarter."
To be sure, today's results were solid. And with regard to the top-line shortfall, it's hard to complain about Trina Solar focusing on quality over quantity. With shares currently trading at just 9 times next year's estimated earnings -- and considering those estimates are likely to creep higher -- I think the stock should be able to continue rewarding patient investors from here.
