Starbucks Soars on Q4 Results; Lifts Earnings Outlook

Starbucks

released its fiscal fourth-quarter earnings results after the closing bell on Thursday. The stock, which had fallen from all-time high levels above $60.00 earlier in the year, was trading up more than 7 percent to $50.00 in Thursday's after-hours session. Starbucks beat Wall Street analysts' consensus earnings estimates, but came up just short of revenue expectations. Traders, however, are reacting to a small bump in the company's fiscal 2013 earnings guidance in pushing up the stock. Starbucks now sees earnings per share in a range of $2.06 to $2.15 compared to its previous guidance of $2.04 to $2.14. The company said that it continues to expect sales to grow between 10 and 13 percent. Currently, analysts are projecting that Starbucks will report EPS of $2.13 on revenue of $14.85 billion in 2013. In its most recent quarter, Starbucks reported net earnings of $359.0 million or $0.46 per share, compared to $358.5 million or $0.47 per share, last year. This beat consensus estimates by a penny. Total revenue in the period was up 11 percent to $3.36 billion versus $3.03 billion last year. This came up just short of analysts' consensus revenue estimates of $3.38 billion.