Nicor: Shares Could Head South Today (GAS)

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By Douglas A. McIntyre Updated Published
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Nicor_logoThis is a story about that rare thing these days: a company with a stock price higher today than it was a year ago. Unfortunately, that may change following today’s release of third quarter earnings from Nicor (NYSE:GAS).

Nicor reported EPS of $0.03 on revenue of $440.3 million. Analysts hadbeen expecting EPS of $0.13 on revenue of $421 million. Operatingincome fell from $22.8 million in the same period last year to $9.3million for the third quarter. Net income fell from $14.5 million tojust $1.3 million.

The company attributes the sharp decline to "lower operating revenuesand higher operating costs." How did they ever figure that out?

The company affirmed its estimates for 2008 earnings of $2.20 to $2.40, which is unchanged from earlier guidance.  But the mid-point there is under the consensus estimate of $2.36 and the low-end of the range is under all of the few available estimates seen.

Nicor’s share price closed at $46.21 on Friday, off 11% from its 52-week high set on September 18th.

Paul Ausick
November 3, 2008

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About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.

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