Libbey Earnings: Here’s Why Investors are Selling Shares Now

Libbey, Inc. (AMEX:LBY) 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 down 3.65%.

Libbey, Inc. Earnings Cheat Sheet

Results: Adjusted Earnings Per Share increased 78.95% to $0.34 in the quarter versus EPS of $0.19 in the year-earlier quarter.

Revenue: Rose 1.71% to $219.1 million from the year-earlier quarter.

Actual vs. Wall St. Expectations: Libbey, Inc. reported adjusted EPS income of $0.34 per share. By that measure, the company beat the mean analyst estimate of $0.28. It missed the average revenue estimate of $219.7 million.

Quoting Management: “We are pleased with this quarter’s results, driven in large part by the increased focus on improving margins and defending and growing our business in our key markets, the core of our recently announced strategic plan. Our cost improvements, coupled with solid sales growth in the U.S. and Canada sales region, led to exceptionally strong adjusted EBITDA. Four strong quarters propelled us to 2012 full year results that included all-time records in sales, income from operations and adjusted EBITDA,” said Stephanie A. Streeter, chief executive officer of Libbey Inc. “Our commitment to improving our cost structure, leveraging our advantaged businesses and strengthening our balance sheet was reflected in our results. We will continue efforts to improve our cost structure. We believe these efforts, in combination with our overall productivity improvements, will enable strengthened financial and operational performance in 2013.”

Key Stats (on next page)…