A Look Into Friday’s Top Earnings Reports: The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly

U.S. stocks are mixed in Friday trading, as oil tumbled and earnings have largely failed to impress. Among the companies that reported their financial results for their latest completed quarter this morning were General Electric Company (NYSE:GE), Gentex Corporation (NASDAQ:GNTX), Honeywell International Inc. (NYSE:HON), Moody’s Corporation (NYSE:MCO), and SunTrust Banks, Inc. (NYSE:STI). Let’s take a look into some of the most relevant figures, and see what the hedge funds in our database think about the companies in question.

At Insider Monkey, we track around 765 hedge funds and other institutional investors. Through extensive backtests, we have determined that imitating some of the stocks that these investors are collectively bullish on can help retail investors generate double digits of alpha per year (see more details about our small-cap strategy).

GE Fails To Impress Despite Record Earnings Growth

Let’s start with General Electric Company (NYSE:GE), which has lost roughly 2.25% today even though it posted a top and bottom-line beat before the market opened. Second quarter EPS of $0.51, up by 64% year-over-year, and revenue of $33.5 billion, up by 15% year-over-year, beat the Street’s consensus estimates by $0.05 and $1.74 billion, respectively. However, a 2% decline in orders amidst what management described as a “volatile and slow-growth economy,” weighed on the stock. Feebleness in its core industrial business was an additional source of concern for investors, although company execs predicted a rebound during the second half of the year.

Among the more than 765 funds that we track, 64 were long General Electric Company (NYSE:GE) at the end of the first quarter. Nelson Peltz’s Trian Fund Management disclosed ownership of 74.24 million shares of the company valued at more than $2.3 billion as of March 31.

Gentex Spikes On Double-Beat

Next up is Gentex Corporation (NASDAQ:GNTX), which is up by roughly 5.4% on Friday, driven by a double beat with its second quarter results. EPS of $0.30 beat the consensus estimate by $0.01, while revenue of $423.8 million, up by 11.7% year-over-year, came in $6.81 million above expectations. For the full year, management guided for revenue in the range of $1.68 billion to $1.72 billion.

15 funds in our database held long positions in Gentex Corporation (NASDAQ:GNTX) at the end of the first quarter. Among them, we can count Chuck Royce’s Royce & Associates, which owned 7.23 million shares when March reached its conclusion.

We’ll dissect the earnings reports released by three other companies this morning on the next page.