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 PhotoMedex (NASDAQ: PHMD), a disease management and aesthetic solutions company focused on improving skin health, dipped as much as 18% after reporting its third-quarter earnings results.
So what: For the quarter, PhotoMedex delivered a 19% decrease in total sales, to $45.9 million, which the company blamed on its distributor in Japan not purchasing any product. According to PhotoMedex, this distributor changed its business model in the third quarter, and it necessitated paring down a lot of its inventory. Even worse, net income shrank to just $1.2 million, or $0.04 in adjusted EPS, compared to net income of $7.5 million, or an adjusted $0.35 in the year prior. Wall Street, on the other hand, was expecting revenue to be closer to $58 million, with EPS of $0.32 this quarter. Furthermore, it's not looking as if PhotoMedex's Japan-based distributor will be contributing anything in the fourth quarter, either, with the company projecting $55 million in sales sans Japan, which would also be well below the current $57.5 million consensus.
Now what: Overall, this will go down as a quarter to forget for shareholders, but PhotoMedex is still an intriguing name investors should keep their eyes on. The company's skin-health solutions offer a lot of potential in markets abroad. The company notes that it's moved its operations into Brazil with the purchase of a Brazilian distributor during the quarter. The Japan-based order blip isn't likely to last beyond the next quarter or two, so today's earnings flop could represent a decent buying opportunity into PhotoMedex. It's certainly worth a closer look as I suspect the global skin aesthetics business could see high single-digit to low double-digit growth throughout the remainder of the decade.
