Fluor 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 global contractor Fluor (NYS: FLR) charged ahead as much as 12% in intraday trading before getting pulled back down to earth.

So what: Second-quarter results from Fluor drove the stock's positive performance today. For the quarter, revenue clocked in at $6 billion, a 15% gain from last year. The bottom line was moving in the right direction as well, climbing from $0.87 in 2010 to $0.94. Both the top and bottom line hurdled analysts' estimates, which called for $0.81 in per-share profit on $5.8 billion in revenue. The company also reported a record backlog of $40.3 billion, which was $10.1 billion higher than last year.

Now what: Not only were the second-quarter results better than expected, but Fluor's management also decided to tighten its full-year outlook to the upside. It now expects that earnings per share will be in around of $3.10 to $3.40, up from a range of $3.00 to $3.40.

While the news out of Fluor was definitely positive, the market is in full-on freak-out mode right now, and it'll be tough for any stock to fight the overwhelmingly bearish tide.

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