Select Comfort Shares Jumped: 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: Specialty-mattress maker Select Comfort (NAS: SCSS) spiked 16% on Thursday after its third-quarter results and full-year outlook beat Wall Street expectations.

So what: Select Comfort's third-quarter results -- earnings per share of $0.31 versus the consensus of $0.27 -- represent its eleventh straight market-topping quarter. Recovering demand and margin-boosting price hikes continue to fuel the company's remarkable turnaround, and judging from today's big rally, it's obvious that investors fully expect the trend to continue.

Now what: The strong results prompted management to raise its full-year profit guidance to $0.99-$1.01 per share (up from an earlier view of $0.90-$0.96) and even seemed to boost its confidence about going after more market share. "Given our low brand awareness and underpenetrated distribution in major markets, we believe we are still early in our growth curve," CEO Bill McLaughlin said. Of course, with the stock now up a whopping 180% over the past year and trading at a 20-plus P/E, Mr. Market might already be baking in much of that optimism.

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At the time thisarticle was published Fool contributor Brian Pacampara owns no position in any of the companies mentioned. Try any of our Foolish newsletter services free 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 Fool's disclosure policy always gets a perfect score.

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