Top Performer for Mon: Cooper Tire & Rubber (CTB) – Zacks #1 Rank Top Performers | Stock Market News & Stocks to Watch from StraightStocks

Top Performer for Mon: Cooper Tire & Rubber (CTB) – Zacks #1 Rank Top Performers

Source: http://www.zacks.com/commentary/12610/Top+Performer+for+Mon%3A+Cooper+Tire+%26+Rubber+%28CTB%29+-+Zacks+%231+Rank+Top+Performers
Posted on Monday, November 2nd, 2009 | In Investing Lessons, Stocks to Watch

Contributed by: James Giaquinto (http://www.zacks.com/) -

Cooper Tire & Rubber Company (CTB) announced its third-quarter results today, which included year-over-year advances in both earnings and revenues.

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Shares of this Zacks #1 Rank Top Performer had advanced approximately 5% by Monday afternoon. In addition, volume has soared to more than 2.7 million shares, which is more than double the daily average of 1.1 million.

Cooper Tire & Rubber is a global company that specializes in the design, manufacture, marketing and sales of passenger car, light truck, medium truck tires and subsidiaries that specialize in motorcycle and racing tires.

CTB is the only company from the Rubber-Tires industry on today’s Zacks #1 Rank List, which includes 185 names in total.

Third-Quarter Report

Cooper Tire & Rubber attributed its strong third-quarter report to lower raw material costs, as well as manufacturing improvements and improved utilization of capacity.

The company earned 77 cents per share in the quarter, surpassing the Zacks Consensus Estimate of 64 cents by more than 20%. The company has now amassed 4 straight quarters of better-than-expected earnings.

The result was also well above the year-ago loss of 94 cents.

Net sales advanced to $803 million from $794 million. Sales at the North American Tire Operations were a bit down year over year to $574 million from $586 million. Meanwhile, sales for International Tire Operations advanced 4% to $297 million.

“This is an exciting time as we begin to see the benefits of changing our competitive dynamics,” said CEO Roy Armes. “We believe the changes we have made are a great start in positioning us for a more consistent level of profitability, and we continue to develop in a way that will make us even stronger.”

Earnings Estimates

This quarterly performance will likely mean raised earnings estimates from analysts, but we’ll have to wait and see the extent of those revisions. (There are currently 4 covering analysts for this year and 5 covering analysts for next.)

Even without reaction from today’s report, earnings estimates had been trending higher for Cooper Tire & Rubber. The Zacks Consensus Estimate for this year is at $1.48 per share, which hasn’t changed in the past month, but is up 72% from 2 months ago.

The Zacks Consensus Estimate for next year is $1.78 per share, marking a possible year-over-year improvement of around 20%. This guidance has been boosted 33% in the past 2 months from $1.34, including an advance of 1.7% in the past 30 days.

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