Novanta (Nasdaq: NOVT) saw its stock shoot up 20% in value this morning after announcing that it nearly doubled its profits in the third quarter, a set of results that beat Wall Street expectations.
Bedford, Mass.–based Novanta – which provides photonics, vision and precision motion technologies to medical equipment makers and advanced manufacturers – earned $14.6 million, or 60 cents per share, off $160.8 million in revenue for the quarter ended Sept. 28. The results were up from earnings of $7.5 million off $146.3 million in revenue for the same quarter a year before.
Analysts polled by Yahoo! Finance expected earnings of 52 cents per share off $154.4 million in revenue for the third quarter.
Novanta’s stock was up more than 20%, trading around $75 per share, during trading this morning.
“Despite a more uncertain economic climate, we are confident in the strength of our business model and our team’s ability to execute,” Novanta CEO Matthijs Glastra said in a news release.
The company is predicting revenue of $610 million to $614 million for the full fiscal year, with earnings between $2.07 and $2.12 per share.
Amid the good news, Novanta’s board of directors has approved the repurchase of an additional $25 million worth of the company’s common shares. The repurchase will start after the company completes an existing $10 million share repurchase.
Early this month, Novanta also announced that it is spending nearly $46 million to buy the remaining 24% of Laser Quantum, which supplies solid-state continuous wave lasers, femtosecond lasers and optical light engines to medical market OEMs.
