The Business Journal of Kansas City: The addition of more than 2,000 ATMs helped Euronet Worldwide Inc. post a 45 percent revenue increase in the first quarter. Earnings for the quarter that ended March 31 increased 47 percent from the same period last year.
The Leawood, Kan.-based financial transaction processor (Nasdaq: EEFT) reported quarterly earnings of $4.8 million, or 13 cents a share, up from $3.3 million, or 10 cents a share, last year.
The positive results sent Euronet's stock price up 8.1 percent on the day, to close at $30.15. This allowed Euronet to pass the $1 billion market capitalization mark — Wall Street's measure of a company's equity value, calculated by multiplying the number of outstanding shares by the stock price — for the first time in its 11-year history.
Earnings for the quarter included a foreign exchange loss of $2.8 million. Excluding that loss and other nonrecurring items, the company posted earnings of $7.7 million, or 21 cents a share.
That fell a penny shy of analysts' consensus earnings estimate of 22 cents a share for the quarter, according to Thomson First Call.
Revenue for the quarter totaled $117.2 million, up from $81.1 million the prior year. Much of the growth came from the company's ATM segment, which reported revenue of $23.9 million for the quarter, up 60 percent from $14.9 million for the first quarter of 2004.
