Wall St. Cheat Sheet

Follow @wallstCS

Moody’s Corp Earnings Cheat Sheet: Beats Expectations

July 27 2011 Tweet Email This

S&P 500 (NYSE:SPY) component Moody’s Corporation (NYSE:MCO) reported net income above Wall Street’s expectations for the second quarter. Moody’s provides credit ratings, credit and economic related research, data and analytical tools, risk management software and quantitative credit risk measures, credit portfolio management solutions and training services.

Get more Earnings Cheat Sheets with our in depth coverage of earnings season >>

Moody’s Earnings Cheat Sheet for the Second Quarter

Results: Net income for Moody’s Corporation rose to $189 million (82 cents per share) vs. $121 million (51 cents per share) in the same quarter a year earlier. This marks a rise of 56.2% from the year earlier quarter.

Revenue: Rose 26.7% to $605.2 million from the year earlier quarter.

Actual vs. Wall St. Expectations: MCO reported adjusted net income of 79 cents per share. By that measure, the company beat the mean estimate of 57 cents per share. It beat the average revenue estimate of $549.3 million.

Quoting Management: “Moody’s second quarter results reflected gains in all credit ratings areas, particularly for corporate debt, and continued strong performance from Moody’s Analytics,” said Raymond McDaniel, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Moody’s. “Based on second quarter performance, we are raising our full year 2011 EPS guidance to a range of $2.38 to $2.48; however, we expect more challenging debt issuance conditions in the U.S. and Europe in the second half of 2011 as compared to the first half of the year.”

Key Stats:

The company has now seen net income rise in three straight quarters. In the first quarter, net income rose 37.1% and in the fourth quarter of the last fiscal year, the figure rose 34.8%.

The company has now topped analyst estimates for the last four quarters. It beat the mark by 14 cents in the first quarter, by 10 cents in the fourth quarter of the last fiscal year, and by 13 cents in the third quarter of the last fiscal year.

Revenue has risen the past four quarters. Revenue increased 21.1% to $577.1 million in the first quarter. The figure rose 16.2% in the fourth quarter of the last fiscal year from the year earlier and climbed 13.6% in the third quarter of the last fiscal year from the year-ago quarter.

The company’s cost of sales rose 27% from a year earlier. Last quarter, cost of sales was 28.2% of revenue, similar to a year earlier.

Competitors to Watch: Equifax Inc. (NYSE:EFX), CreditRiskMonitor.com, Inc. (CRMZ), McGraw-Hill (NYSE:MHP), Paychex (NASDAQ:PAYX), Automatic Data Processing (NASDAQ:ADP), Thomson Reuters (NYSE:TRI), EDGAR (NASDAQ:EDGR), FactSet Research (NYSE:FDS), ValuLine (NASDAQ:VALU), Envestnet (NYSE:ENV), Morningstar (NASDAQ:MORN) and The Dun & Bradstreet Corp. (NYSE:DNB).