Over the two quarters I did some analysis on Heartland Payment *business* performance (how profitable are they) versus their *stock* performance. As Ben Graham said in the short run the market is a voting machine in the long run it is a weighing machine.
In the short run the market reacts to a lot of emotion and uncertainty (votes) and this was obviously the case with the breach at Heartland, but my analysis of the business performance post-breach was that the business appeared to be recovering. In the long run its the earnings (weight) that count and Heartland's value metrics seemed encouraging.
Heartland just reported Q1 earnings, some highlights include
* Beat estimates on revenue and earnings and raised guidance for the year.
* Transaction volume up 7%, operating margin up at 12.9%
* Legal expense from breach is under a penny a share
The market liked the results with HPY shares up over 10% as of now on a down day.
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