DAKT - Daktronics, Inc - visual display solutions for the sports, commercial, and transportation applications

Daktronics could light up the scoreboard for investors. The company is riding higher gross margins into more profits for shareholders. Over the past month, next year's earnings estimates have increased by a penny to $1.00 per share. This would represent 27.5% earnings growth over 2007. The past two quarters have produced an average surprise of 25%. Full Analysis Daktronics, Inc. (DAKT), through its subsidiaries, engages in the design, development, marketing, and support of visual display solutions for the sports, commercial, and transportation applications. Its products include sport and theater products, such as indoor and outdoor scoreboards, timing systems, digit displays, sound systems, statistics software, hoist systems, and other related products; video products consisting of displays comprising a number of pixels capable of creating various levels of video, graphics, and animation. In mid-August, the company reported fiscal 2008 first quarter net sales of $120.9 million and net income of $7.1 million, or $0.17 per diluted share, compared with first quarter net sales of $92.2 million and net income of $5.0 million, or $0.12 per diluted share, one year ago. Analysts expected 14 cents per share in earnings. Backlog at the end of the quarter was approximately $142 million, compared with a backlog of approximately $123 million at the end of the first quarter of fiscal 2007 and $127 million last quarter. The company is providing financial guidance for the second quarter of fiscal 2008. Daktronics expects that net sales for the second quarter of fiscal 2008 will be in the range of $132 million to $144 million and net earnings will be in the range of $0.17 to $0.25 per share. "We were very pleased with this quarter's performance," said Jim Morgan, president and chief executive officer. "Most importantly, we were able to execute at better than expected gross profit margins. The gross margin improvement comes from the benefit of having the capacity expansion mostly behind us and raw material cost savings." The stock is still well below its 52-week high of $40.05, but the prospects look bright for the company. Content Courtesy: Zacks Investment Research #1 Ranked Stocks Highlight Archive To truly take advantage of the Zacks Rank, you need to first understand how it works. That is why we created the free special report: Zacks Rank Guide: Harnessing the Power of Earnings Estimate Revisions. | Blog Home| VitalStocks Home