Danaher (NYSE:DHR) beat the consensus forecast for its first-quarter sales and earnings, sending its share price up yesterday despite a cut to its full-year earnings forecast and a bottom-line slide.
The Washington-based company posted profits of $327.3 million, or 46¢ per share, on sales of $4.88 billion for the three months ended March 29, for a -42.2% profit decline on sales growth of 3.9% compared with Q1 2018. Adjusted to exclude one-time items, earnings per share were $1.07, 6¢ ahead of the consensus on Wall Street, where analyts were looking for sales of $4.79 billion.
“During the first quarter, we achieved 5.5% core revenue growth and believe we expanded our market-leading positions across a number of our businesses. Combined with high-single digit adjusted earnings per share growth and good cash flow generation, our performance is a testament to our team’s focused execution and the power of the Danaher business system,” president & CEO Thomas Joyce Jr. said in prepared remarks. “We are excited about our recently announced agreement to acquire GE Biopharma and continue to expect the deal to close in the fourth quarter of this year. The business will be an excellent complement to our current biologics workflow solutions and will bring a highly innovative, industry-leading product suite to our life sciences portfolio. We look forward to welcoming this talented team to Danaher.”
Danaher cut its adjusted EPS forecast for the full year to $4.72 to $4.80, compared with $4.75 to $4.85 previously, largely on dilution from the $21.4 billion GE Biopharma deal.
Second-quarter adjusted EPS are pegged at $1.13 to $1.16, the company said.
DHR shares closed up 1.5% at $126.77 apiece yesterday. The markets are closed today in observance of Good Friday.