Topic: Growth Stocks

Wall Street Stock Forecaster Hotline – Friday, November 2, 2012

Article Excerpt

WESTERN UNION CO., $11.95, New York symbol WU, reported better-than-expected quarterly earnings this week. It also raised its dividend. However, the company cut its earnings forecast for all of 2012. That caused the stock to fall 33%. Western Union provides money transfer and foreign-exchange services in over 200 countries. In the three months ended September 30, 2012, the company’s earnings rose 12.4%, to $269.5 million from $239.7 million a year earlier. Western Union is an aggressive buyer of its own shares. Because of fewer shares outstanding, earnings per share rose at a faster pace of 18.4%, to $0.45 from $0.38. If you exclude costs to integrate the business-payments division of U.K.-based Travelex Holdings, which Western Union bought in 2011, per-share earnings would have risen 15.0%, to $0.46 from $0.40. On this basis, the latest earnings beat the consensus forecast of $0.45 a share. Revenue rose just 0.8%, to $1.42 billion from $1.41 billion. That’s mainly because the high U.S. dollar hurts the contribution of…