Shares of Magna International Inc. (MGA) hit a new 52-week high of $75.61 on Jul 15, which is above its previous level of $75.41 a day before, and closed at $74.60 on the same date. The closing price represented a solid one-year return of 88.3% and year-to-date return of 47.0%.
Magna International, based in Aurora, Canada, is a leading manufacturer and supplier of automotive components. It has a market cap of $17.5 billion. Average volume of shares traded over the last three months stood at approximately 722.2K.
Shares of MGA started escalating following its improved first quarter results and promising guidance announced on May 10 as well as improving fundamentals in the automobile components market.
Magna International posted a 7.5% rise in earnings per share to $1.57 in the first quarter of 2013 from $1.46 in the year-ago quarter and outpaced the Zacks Consensus Estimate by 17 cents. Net income increased 7.6% to $369.0 million from $343.0 million in the year-ago quarter.
Revenues went up 9.1% to $8.4 billion, exceeding the Zacks Consensus Estimate of $7.9 billion. The increase was driven by improvement in North American and Rest of World (ROW) production sales as well as higher tooling, engineering and other sales.
For full-year 2013, Magna expects revenues in the External Production segment between $27.2 billion and $28.2 billion while Complete Vehicle Assembly sales are projected in the range of $2.8 billion to $3.1 billion. These were higher than revenues of $26.0 billion generated from External Production and $2.6 billion from Complete Vehicle Assembly in 2012.
Total revenue of the company is expected between $32.6 billion and $34.0 billion for 2013. It is higher than $30.8 billion generated in 2012.
Not only Magna, shares of other auto parts makers such as Lear Corp. (LEA), Johnson Controls Inc. (JCI) and BorgWarner Inc. (BWA) are also reaching 52-week highs due to continuous improvements in the automobile components market. Investors believe that the recessionary conditions in the industry no longer exist.
Currently, shares of Magna International retain a Zacks Rank #2, which translates to a short-term rating (1–3 months) of Buy.
Be the first to comment