What's happening: Shares of Core Laboratories (CLB +0.00%) jumped as high as 15% in early morning trading following last night's earnings report and are up 9% at the time of this writing.
Why it's happening: After market close yesterday, Core Labs reported ex-item earnings per share of $0.82 -- adjusted for foreign exchange losses -- and revenue of $204 million. This soundly beat Wall Street analysts' expectations of $0.72 per share and $194 million in revenue. Much of the earnings beat was attributed to the company's cost-cutting measures that led to improving operational margins despite the weak overall market for oil services stocks.
Another reason shares are popping today is that Core Labs management upped its guidance for the second half of this year. Management is guiding for global drilling activity to increase for the rest of 2015 and expects that this will lead to revenue bottoming out this quarter. The market has welcomed these tidbits of good news for a stock that has declined more than 35% over the past 12 months.
