Huron Consulting Group Shares Popped: What You Need to Know

Although we don't believe in timing the market or panicking over market movements, we do like to keep an eye on big changes -- just in case they're material to our investing thesis.

What: Shares of financial and operating consulting company Huron Consulting Group (NAS: HURN) vaulted as much as 13% higher earlier in today's trading session following the company's better-than-expected second-quarter results before paring down half of their gains.

So what: Cost-cutting and expense controls led Huron Consulting to a much better quarterly profit than Wall Street had anticipated. Huron reported a quarterly profit of $0.44 on a 17% jump in revenue to $159 million. This compares to consensus estimates of $0.38 on revenue of $149.4 million. The company also narrowed its full-year revenue and earnings guidance to $600 million to $620 million in revenue with GAAP earnings of $1.60-$1.75 per share. Both of these figure come in slightly ahead of what Wall Street analysts had been expecting.

Now what: Huron and its peers FTI Consulting (NYS: FCN) and Navigant Consulting (NYS: NCI) have all managed to surpass EPS and revenue estimates over the past few weeks. Unlike FTI, however, Huron's growth is derived primarily from cost savings rather than top-line expansion. Cost savings will only get Huron so far; so while today's move higher might seem like a buying opportunity, I'm more than willing to wait on the sidelines for a more concrete growth figures and suggest you do the same.

Craving more input? Consider addingHuron Consulting Groupto your watchlist.

At the time thisarticle was published Fool contributorSean Williamshas no material interest in any companies mentioned in this article. You can follow him on CAPS under the screen nameTMFUltraLong. Try any of our Foolish newsletter servicesfree for 30 days.We Fools may not all hold the same opinions, but we all believe that considering a diverse range of insights makes us better investors. The Motley Fool has adisclosure policy.

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