Forward Air Earnings: Here’s Why Shares are Up Now

Forward Air Corp. (NASDAQ:FWRD) delivered a profit and beat Wall Street’s expectations, BUT came up short on beating the revenue expectation. The revenue miss is a negative sign to shareholders seeking high growth out of the company. Shares are up 0.27%.

Forward Air Corp. Earnings Cheat Sheet

Results: Adjusted Earnings Per Share increased 31.71% to $0.54 in the quarter versus EPS of $0.50 in the year-earlier quarter.

Revenue: Rose 4.88% to $155.5 million from the year-earlier quarter.

Actual vs. Wall St. Expectations: Forward Air Corp. reported adjusted EPS income of $0.54 per share. By that measure, the company beat the mean analyst estimate of $0.5. It missed the average revenue estimate of $158.09 million.

Quoting Management: Bruce A. Campbell, Chairman, President and CEO, said, “Overall, we achieved the fourth quarter Forward Air, Inc. operating segment results that we anticipated.” Commenting on the Forward Air Solutions business segment, Mr. Campbell said, “Over the course of 2012, we made good progress within our Solutions service offering. In the fourth quarter, we grew revenue 12.5% primarily on revenues from newly-won business. While the profitability from our new business wins is initially offset by the start-up costs associated with any new business launch, we are encouraged by how robust our new business pipeline looks for the first quarter.”

Key Stats (on next page)…