Why MWI Veterinary's Shares Jumped

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 animal-health products specialist MWI Veterinary Supply (NAS: MWIV) were bounding ahead today, gaining as much as 16% in intraday trading after the company reported fiscal third-quarter results.

So what: When you back out the impact of MWI's acquisition of Micro Beef Technologies, the year-over-year revenue growth for the quarter ending in June was "just" 19% in the U.S. and 20% in the U.K. rather than 35%. Even so, it's tough to argue with CEO Jim Cleary's assessment that "the results in the June quarter were again outstanding."

Aside from the strong revenue growth, MWI also managed to bring down selling, general, and administrative expenses as a percentage of revenue and it increased earnings per share 26%, to $1.15. Wall Street analysts were expecting just $1.05 in EPS on $525 million in revenue.

Now what: It's not just the past quarter that's exciting investors today though, because MWI also boosted its full fiscal-year outlook. For fiscal 2012, which ends in September, MWI's management nudged its revenue range up to $2.05 billion to $2.065 billion. On the bottom line, the company now estimates earnings per share of $4.14 to $4.20. The previous EPS range had been $3.96 to $4.06 and Wall Street analysts had been looking for $4.06 in per-share profit for the year.

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The article Why MWI Veterinary's Shares Jumped originally appeared on Fool.com.

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