What Happened:
Shares of grocery store chain Sprouts Farmers Market (NASDAQ:SFM) jumped 20.1% in the pre-market session after the company reported second-quarter earnings results. SFM provided an optimistic full-year earnings forecast, which blew past analysts' expectations. Its revenue and EPS also outperformed Wall Street's estimates during the quarter. Zooming out, we think this was a great quarter that shareholders will appreciate.
Following the results, Wall Street analysts raised the stock's rating. BMO analyst Kelly Bania upgraded the stock from Underperform to Market Perform and raised the price target from $40 to $102. The analyst added "Even if the competitive risks start to have an impact, [comparable store sales] have accelerated to a point that the company may still be able to absorb these impacts, and may still reach same-store sales targets."
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What is the market telling us:
Sprouts's shares are not very volatile than the market average and over the last year have had only 2 moves greater than 5%. Moves this big are very rare for Sprouts and that is indicating to us that this news had a significant impact on the market's perception of the business.
The biggest move we wrote about over the last year was 3 months ago, when the stock gained 15.2% on the news that the company reported first-quarter results with same-store sales above expectations, leading to a revenue and, ultimately, an EPS beat. Sprouts's optimistic earnings forecast for the next quarter and the full year were impressive, which beat analysts' expectations. Zooming out, we think this was a great quarter that shareholders will appreciate.
Sprouts is up 96.1% since the beginning of the year, and at $96.53 per share, has set a new 52-week high. Investors who bought $1,000 worth of Sprouts's shares 5 years ago would now be looking at an investment worth $5,560.
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