Green Mountain Coffee Roasters ' (NASDAQ: GMCR ) feel-good story of the year
already was hanging on a shaky precipice after a rocky October. Thursday's
earnings report was the long-awaited shove. The Vermont-based purveyor of the
Keurig single-serving K-Cups watched its stock free-fall 40% Thursday on a
relatively strong earnings report that barely missed Wall Street expectations.
Green Mountain reported revenue growth of 91% to $711.9 million and earnings per
share of 47 cents for the fourth quarter. But those figures lagged Wall Street
expectations of $760 million and 48 cents per share, respectively. The figures
were far from the norm for GMCR, marking the company's first sales miss in two
years. Further exacerbating the stock's descent were short sellers encouraged
by hedge fund manager David Einhorn's October recommendation against Green
Mountain because of accounting irregularities that prompted an SEC
investigation. As of Oct. 31, the short interest on GMCR was 16%. However, Green
Mountain CEO Lawrence Blanford did not attribute the sales miss to accounting
issues in the report , instead saying, a number of factors including changes in
wholesale customer ordering patterns in our grocery and club channels despite
steady consumer point-of-sale demand in those channels. As recently as
mid-September, Green Mountain was one of the year's best financial stories.
Shares of GMCR quadrupled in value since January, reaching a high of $111, and
Green Mountain had made partnerships with Starbucks (NASDAQ: SBUX ) and
Dunkin' Brands (NASDAQ: DNKN ) to make those companies' coffees available in
its popular K-Cups. However, by late September, Green Mountain joined a group of
companies including OpenTable (NASDAQ: OPEN ) and more recently Netflix (NASDAQ:
NFLX ) that have watched their stock price fall from triple digits into double
digits this year. Green Mountain shares had slowly declined to the high $60s in
recent days, but apparently still had farther to fall by the end of
Thursday's selloff, GMCR was sitting at $40.89. Also Thursday, casino company
Melco Crown Entertainment (NASDAQ: MPEL ) reported strong earnings but watched
its stock and the rest of the gaming sector take a dive. Melco Crown reported
a record $113 million in earnings for the third quarter, good for EPS of 21
cents versus analysts' expectations of 16 cents. MPEL fell 12% to $9.60, and
dropping with it were Las Vegas Sands (NYSE: LVS , -3.67%, $44.56) and Wynn
Resorts (NASDAQ: WYNN , -3.5%, $119.57). Three Up Viacom (NYSE: VIA.B ): Up
8.21% ($3.31) to $43.61. Cabot Oil & Gas (NYSE: COG ): Up 7.73% ($6.21) to
$86.55. Cisco (NASDAQ: CSCO ): Up 5.68% ($1) to $18.61. Three Down Take-Two
Interactive (NASDAQ: TTWO ): Down 6.73% ($1.04) to $14.41. Delta Air Lines
(NYSE: DAL ): Down 4.75% (38 cents) to $7.62. Edwards Lifesciences (NYSE: EW ):
Down 3.74% ($2.68) to $69.02. As of this writing, Kyle Woodley did not own a
position in any of the aforementioned stocks. Check out recaps from previous
trading days here .
No comments:
Post a Comment