Stocks rose on Friday following encouraging data on economic growth. The Dow Jones Industrial Average (^DJI 0.97%) and the S&P 500 (^GSPC 0.61%) indexes each finished higher by less than 0.5%.
Today's stock market
|
Index |
Percentage Change |
Point Change |
|---|---|---|
|
Dow |
0.21% |
44.79 |
|
S&P 500 |
0.33% |
7.73 |
Data source: Yahoo! Finance.
Financial stocks saw heavy trading, but trailed the broader market as the Financial Select Sector SPDR ETF (XLF 1.93%) posted a slight decline. Meanwhile, gold prices ticked lower, but the leveraged bullish bet on the precious metal, Direxion Daily Gold Miners Bull 3X ETF (NUGT 0.83%), still rose 8%.
Vail Resorts (MTN 1.59%) and Ulta Beauty (ULTA 3.24%) stocks both broke away from broader indexes after the companies announced solid quarterly earnings results.
Image source: Getty Images.
Vail Resorts gets help from Canada
Shares of Vail Resorts jumped almost 5% after the company posted surprisingly strong fiscal second-quarter earnings results. The company overcame a weak start to the ski season at its U.S. resorts as revenue jumped 21% to $725 million thanks to a big assist from its recently acquired Whistler Blackcomb properties. Those Canada-based resorts benefited from a relatively weak Canadian dollar and ideal winter ski conditions. Overall, lift revenue rose 24.5%, ski school sales were up 25.9%, and dining revenue rose 21.5%. Net income spiked 27.5%, helped along by higher ski lift prices, to $149 million.
"We are very pleased with our results for the quarter," CEO Rob Katz said in a press release. "We had strong results during the holidays and the month of January despite a slower start to the season at our U.S. resorts resulting from below average early season conditions," he continued.
Vail's season-to-date metrics revealed that total lift revenue is running 6.7% higher in its North American resorts than over the same period last year. Ancillary spending, including on food and ski school, is seeing healthy growth, too. The better-than-expected showing convinced management to raise their earnings outlook for the full fiscal year while boosting Vail's quarterly dividend by 30% to $1.053 per share.
Ulta Beauty's beat and raise
Ulta Beauty stock rose nearly 5% after the spa and beauty retailer beat sales growth estimates for the fourth consecutive quarter. Sales improved 25% overall thanks to the powerful combination of aggressive store growth and soaring traffic gains at existing locations. In fact, the company's 16.6% comparable-store sales jump was only slightly lower than the prior quarter's, which marked a record high for Ulta.
As it did then, the retailer benefited from double-digit customer traffic gains and a 63% spike in e-commerce revenue. Gross profit margin held steady at near 35% of sales for the quarter but improved by 70 basis points to 36% for the full year.
Image source: Getty Images.
"The Ulta Beauty team delivered outstanding fourth quarter results," CEO Mary Dillon said in a press release, "capping an exceptional year of sales and earnings growth." The company's 15.8% comps improvement in 2016 far surpassed the 8% to 10% gains that management initially targeted.
Looking forward, Dillon and her team see comps growth slowing down this year, particularly as the digital sales channel decelerates to a 40% increase from last year's 56%. Still, the range of expansion that they forecast, of 8% to 10%, is above the outlook that they had predicted last October, which highlights how dramatically its operating trends have been improving over the last 18 months.
