Friday, November 11, 2011

Today's Major Market Move: CSC (Computer Sciences Corporation) Drops 18% in the Past Week

While overall the U.S. equity markets were mostly flat last week (the S&P 500 was up .8%, the DJIA up 1.3%), one stock that had a rough time was Computer Sciences Corporation (ticker: CSC), which declined 18%. Here's the list of last week's worst performing stocks in the S&P 500:

Click here to go to the live table.

CSC announced its fiscal 2nd quarter results this past Thursday and as you could probably guess from the stock performance, the results were a disaster. Pro forma earnings actually came in well ahead of expectations: $.94/share vs $.68/share estimate. However on the negative side they had 2 one time charges (one was a huge goodwill impairment charge for $2.69 billion) and they guided future yearly earnings lower from $4.80-4.70 to $4.10-4.05.

Here's a chart of the % change of earnings estimates, earnings actuals (pro forma) and stock price:

Click here to go to the live chart.

Hopefully this latest goodwill impairment was a "kitchen-sink" type charge off, giving the company some breathing room to avoid future one-time charges in the next few quarters. Goodwill impairments tend to be rather fuzzy and give a company the opportunity to "massage" their balance sheet.

No comments:

Post a Comment