Royal Philips (NYSE:PHG) shares ticked up today on third-quarter results that came in ahead of the consensus forecast.
The Amsterdam-based company posted profits of €340 million, or €0.37 per share, on sales of €5 billion for the three months ended Sep. 30, 2020, for a 63.5% bottom-line gain on sales growth of 5.9%.
Adjusted to exclude one-time items, earnings per share were €0.60, €0.14 ahead of Wall Street, where analysts were looking for sales of €4.8 billion.
The company attributed much of its growth year-over-year to a boost from its connected care business, which, due to increased demand for patient monitors, ventilators and digital health related to the COVID-19 pandemic, experienced a 42% increase in revenue.
“It is clear that the COVID-19 pandemic is far from over, and our teams remain fully focused on delivering against our triple duty of care: meeting critical customer needs, safeguarding the health and safety of our employees, and ensuring business continuity,” Philips CEO Frans van Houten said in a news release. “I am pleased that, under challenging circumstances, we have been able to execute our plans and return to growth and improved profitability for the group in the third quarter.
“Looking ahead, we continue to see uncertainty and volatility related to the impact of COVID-19 across the world, but our order book remains solid. For the full year 2020, we continue to expect to deliver modest comparable sales growth, with an Adjusted EBITA margin of around the level of last year.”
Philips said it will offer the full scope of its financial projections during an event on Nov. 6, but for now noted that it projects an acceleration of the average annual comparable sales growth to 5-6%, with all business segments falling in this range.
PHG shares were up 1.8% at $49.71 per share in midday trading today. MassDevice’s MedTech 100 Index — which includes stocks of the world’s largest medical device companies — was slightly up from the morning at an increase of 0.14%.