How Will Western Union (WU) Stock React to Q1 Earnings Miss?
NEW YORK (TheStreet) -- Western Union (WU) - Get Report reported weaker-than-expected earnings for the 2016 first quarter after Tuesday's market close.
The Englewood, CO-based money transfer company posted earnings of 37 per diluted share, missing analysts' estimates by one cent.
Revenue declined 2% to nearly $1.3 billion year-over-year and was roughly in line with analysts' expectations.
A strong U.S. dollar hurt revenue by $57 million, the company said.
"The first quarter was in line with our expectations, as our business continued to show resilience despite a still challenging global environment," President and CEO Hikmet Ersek said in a statement.
"Results were led by continued strong performance from Westernunion.com and the U.S. outbound consumer money transfer business, and we also made further investments in capabilities to drive future growth," Ersek added.
For 2016, the company forecasts earnings per share between $1.58 and $1.70. Analysts are looking for earnings of $1.63 per share for the full year.
Shares of Western Union closed down by 1.34% to $19.83 on heavy trading volume on Tuesday.
About 5.54 million of the company's shares changed hands today vs. its average volume of 4.24 million shares per day.
Separately, TheStreet Ratings Team has a "Buy" rating with a score of B on the stock.
The company's strengths can be seen in multiple areas, such as its attractive valuation levels, expanding profit margins and notable return on equity.
The team believes its strengths outweigh the fact that the company has had generally high debt management risk by most measures that were evaluated.
Recently, TheStreet Ratings objectively rated this stock according to its "risk-adjusted" total return prospect over a 12-month investment horizon. Not based on the news in any given day, the rating may differ from Jim Cramer's view or that of this articles's author.
You can view the full analysis from the report here: WU
