A. Schulman Rises 3% After Q1 Earnings Beat

A. Schulman SHLM is up more than three percent in after hours trading after the company announced its first quarter results. The company reported a Q1 EPS of $0.57 versus the Street estimate of $0.47. Earnings per share were up 14 percent from the year-ago period. Revenue came in at $585.4 million versus the Street estimate of $571.9 million. Sales were up eight percent year-over-year. "We are extremely encouraged by our strong start to fiscal 2014 and expect to continue the trend of earnings improvement," Joseph M. Gingo, Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer of A. Schulman, said in a company release. "During the quarter, we successfully capitalized on operational efficiencies in Europe, benefitted from prior restructuring in Europe and Latin America, as well as gained solid contributions from our bolt-on acquisitions globally." A. Schulman raised its FY2014 EPS Guidance from $2.08 - $2.13 to $2.13 - $2.18 versus the Street estimate of $2.10. This morning the company announced that James Irwin (a former Cliffs Natural Resources exec) had been named Senior Director of Corporate Business Development. The newly created position will allow Irwin to manage "all aspects of mergers, acquisitions and divestitures globally." "We are excited to appoint a dedicated resource to this critical aspect of our strategy and we believe Jim's outstanding mix of corporate and client-advisory business development experience will provide further strength to our team and help us continue our track record of successful acquisitions," said Gingo, who was quoted in a separate company release Disclosure: At the time of this writing, Louis Bedigian had no position in the equities mentioned in this report.