Cerner Posts Big Quarter, Raises Guidance

The company beats estimates and raises its full-year forecast.

Author:: Michael Dunn
Publish date:: Apr 18, 2002 8:01 AM EDT

Clinical and management information provider

Cerner

beat first-quarter estimates on strong revenue growth and raised its 2002 full-year guidance.

The company posted first-quarter net income of $10.4 million, or 28 cents a share, a 65% increase over last year's $6.3 million, or 17 cents a share. According to Thomson Financial/First Call, Wall Street analysts had been expecting to see 25 cents a share.

Cerner said it continued to see strong demand throughout the quarter for its health care information technology as the population ages. The company saw record new bookings revenue of $172.3 million for the quarter, a 47% increase from a year ago.

Total revenue for the quarter grew 45% to $175.3 million from $121.0 million a year ago, well ahead of the First Call estimate of $153.64 million.

The company offered guidance for 2002, saying it was comfortable with analyst estimates for the second quarter of EPS of 30 cents to 31 cents, but it sees second-quarter revenue around $175 million, ahead of Wall Street's estimate of $163.02 million. For the year, the company raised its guidance to EPS in the range of $1.33 to $1.36 on revenue of $700 million to $720 million, compared with the current consensus estimate of $1.31 a share on revenue of $664.9 million.

Shares of Cerner were trading up 2.2% to $52.00 on the Instinet platform on the news after closing at $50.90 Wednesday.