Stewart Enterprises Earnings: Here’s Why Investors are Buying Shares Now

Stewart Enterprises Inc. (NASDAQ:STEI) delivered a profit and beat Wall Street’s expectations, AND beat the revenue expectation. The revenue beat is a positive sign to shareholders seeking high growth out of the company. Shares are up 3.58%.

Stewart Enterprises Inc. Earnings Cheat Sheet

Results: Adjusted Earnings Per Share increased 80% to $0.18 in the quarter versus EPS of $0.10 in the year-earlier quarter.

Revenue: Rose 8.72% to $135.7 million from the year-earlier quarter.

Actual vs. Wall St. Expectations: Stewart Enterprises Inc. reported adjusted EPS income of $0.18 per share. By that measure, the company beat the mean analyst estimate of $0.13. It beat the average revenue estimate of $129.94 million.

Quoting Management: Thomas M. Kitchen, President and Chief Executive Officer, stated, “For the first quarter of 2013, we generated the highest quarterly net earnings and earnings per share in more than 10 years. We are particularly pleased with the balance we achieved between our funeral and cemetery segments. Our funeral businesses turned in a superb performance during the first quarter of 2013, highlighted by a more than 8 percent increase in same-store funeral services. While we believe deaths in our markets increased period-over-period, our increase in funeral services is particularly strong compared to industry-wide data and is the third consecutive quarter of increased funeral services. This improvement in services contributed to an 8.5 percent improvement in funeral revenue, a 14 percent improvement in funeral gross profit and a 140 basis point improvement in funeral gross profit margin. We are also very pleased with the strong performance of our cemetery segment, where we generated a 9 percent increase in cemetery revenue, a 63 percent improvement in cemetery gross profit and a 620 basis point improvement in cemetery gross margin. We have started fiscal 2013 strong by growing first quarter revenue and profitability and continuing the positive momentum we generated during fiscal year 2012.”

Key Stats (on next page)…