Shares in Icon rose today after the company beat expectations on Wall Street with its third quarter earnings results.
The Dublin, Ireland-based company posted profits of $74.2 million, or $1.35 per share, on sales of $440.3 million for the 3 months ended September 30, seeing bottom-line growth of 10% while sales grew 4.8% compared with the same period last year.
Earnings per share just beat the $1.32 consensus on Wall Street, while sales topped the $436.4 million revenue expectations.
“We continue to execute well on our strategic plans, and quarter three represented another very strong quarter for ICON. We achieved record gross and net business wins of $691 million and $581 million respectively, resulting in a gross book to bill of 1.57 and a net book to bill of 1.32. We grew our backlog by 13% year on year to nearly $5 billion, revenues grew 4.8% to $440 million and our top customer concentration reduced further to 16.6% from 25.2% last year. Revenue growth outside our top customer was 17% year over year. In addition, earnings per share grew 13.4% year over year to $1.35. Levels of business opportunity continue to be strong and we remain optimistic for the future as we continue to strive to be the CRO partner of choice for the biopharma industry. We are therefore increasing our 2017 earnings guidance from a range of $5.18 – $5.38 to $5.30 – $5.40 and reaffirming our revenue guidance to be in the range of $1,740 – $1,770 million,” CEO Dr. Steve Cutler said in a press release.
The company lifted its earnings guidance for the rest of the year, moving from a range of $5.18 and $5.38 to between $5.30 and $5.40, while revenue was reaffirmed at between $1.7 and $1.8 million.
Shares in Icon have risen 6.8% so far today, at $120.63 as of 1:57 p.m. EDT.
