Hospira (HSP) Beats Q4 by $0.11, Revenues in Line

Hospira Inc. (HSP) shares are up less than one percent to $87.45 in morning trading Thursday after the company reported its fourth quarter earnings results.

The Lake Forest, Illinois-based firm reported earnings of $0.53 per share on revenues of $1.126 billion, up 3.9% from a year ago. Analysts were expecting EPS of $0.42 on revenues of $1.113.

For full-year 2014, the company saw its net sales come in at $4.5 billion, with an adjusted diluted EPS of $2.59. On a GAAP basis, full-year 2014 diluted EPS were $1.95.

“Hospira’s solid fourth-quarter results contributed to a year of excellent growth for the company,” said in a statement F. Michael Ball, chief executive officer. “Despite the entry of generic competition in the United States for our proprietary sedative Precedex™, we delivered a very good year for Hospira. Our results speak to the significant progress we made — as well as the multiple milestones we achieved — in our key growth areas of generic injectables, biosimilars and devices.

On valuation measures, Hospira Inc. shares, which currently have an average 3-month trading volume of 2.1 million shares, trade at a trailing-12 P/E of 44.68, a forward P/E of 36.59 and a P/E to growth ratio of 3.45. The median Wall Street price target on the name is $88.00 with a high target of $90.00. Currently ticker has 1 ‘Buy’ endorsement, compared to 11 ’Holds’ and No ‘Sell’.

Profitability-wise, HSP has a t-12 profit and operating margin of 7.48% and 10.60%, respectively. The $14.79B market cap company reported $541.40M in cash vs. $1.76B in debt in its most recent quarter.

HSP currently prints a one year return of about 98%, and a year-to-date return of 42.58%.

The chart below shows where the equity has traded over the last 52 weeks.

Hospira, Inc. provides injectable pharmaceutical drugs and infusion technologies to develop, manufacture, distribute, and market products worldwide. The company was founded in 2003.

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