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 Generac Holdings, (GNRC +3.27%) rose more than 12% Thursday after the company turned in better-than-expected fourth-quarter results.
So what: Quarterly sales rose 10% year over year to $376.2 million, which translated to 27.6% growth in adjusted net income to $1.11 per diluted share. Meanwhile, analysts were only looking for earnings of $0.90 per share on sales of $359.34 million.
Now what: CEO Aaron Jagdfeld weighed in, "Once again we experienced strong growth across all regions of the United States, as home standby generators further gain in popularity and the Generac brand is increasingly recognized as the leading name in backup power."
Generac also closed its purchase of Baldor Generators in early November -- its third such acquisition in 2013 -- which should help further expand the breadth of its operations in North America.
With shares currently trading at a reasonable 15 times this year's estimated earnings and if Generac can continue growing at a reasonable clip going forward, I think the stock could still manage to reward patient investors over the long term.
