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 Methode Electronics (MEI -2.75%) jumped more than 13% Thursday after the company released better-than-expected fiscal fourth quarter results.
So what: Quarterly sales rose 51.7% year-over-year to $224.9 million, while net income nearly quintupled over the same period to $48.2 million, or $1.25 per share. Analysts, on average, were only expecting earnings of $0.54 per share on sales of $198.38 million.
Note, however, that Methode also saw significant one-time benefits to its bottom line, notably including both the $17.5 million release of a U.S. deferred tax valuation allowance, and a $3.2 million in gains related to the sale of its Lumidigm investment. Excluding the impact of its one-time items, Methode's quarterly net income would have been $18.8 million, or $0.49 per share.
Now what: But investors were willing to overlook this considering Methode also provided strong fiscal 2015 guidance. Specifically, the company sees sales in the range of $835 million to $860 million, which should result in earnings per share in the range of $1.85 to $2.00. By contrast, analysts were only modeling fiscal 2015 sales and earnings of $746.3 million and $1.79 per share, respectively.
Shares of Methode currently trade around 1.8 times trailing 12-month sales, and 19.4 times the midpoint of management's expected fiscal 2015 earnings -- both reasonable premiums to pay given Methode's impressive growth. As a result, and even after today's pop, I think Methode Electronics should be able to still reward patient long-term investors from here.
