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: Portable storage container owner General Finance Corporation (GFN) popped more than 11% Monday after reporting better-than-expected fiscal second-quarter earnings.
So what: Quarterly revenue jumped 35% to $88.7 million and net income nearly tripled to $4.6 million, or $0.17 per share. Analysts were only expecting revenue of $79.3 million and earnings of a penny per share.
While this looks like a huge earnings beat on the surface, it is due in large part to a change in how the company's investments are accounted for. The Lone Star business, which was acquired in 2014, was included in fourth-quarter results, adding $17.4 million to revenue. So, this should be considered when looking at General Finance's results.
Now what: Even when you pull out Lone Star's impact, the company had a fairly good quarter, growing revenue 8.7%. But operations in Asia and Australia are struggling because of weak demand and weak currencies. I think those headwinds are too big to ignore for a stock trading at 21 times forward estimates. I'd like to see more than acquisition growth to get excited about this stock, and I'm not seeing that in the fiscal second quarter, so I'll stay out of Monday's pop.
