Sales Growth Trends

Although mentioned before, it’s worth repeating that while the market prices stocks based on earnings expectations—earnings come from sales. That’s important because a slowdown in sales growth often precedes an earnings disappointment.

Zoll Medical provides a good example. Zoll makes defibrillators, devices used to resuscitate heart attack victims. Table 12-2 shows Zoll’s sales and earnings from 1998 through 2000, as displayed on Reuters Investor’s Highlights report.

Table 12-2. Reuters reports quarterly sales and earnings data for Zoll Medical.
Quarter199819992000
Quarterly sales (in millions)
March13.617.925.7
June12.920.827.4
September16.223.928.8
December16.124.428.6
Quarterly EPS
March0.050.140.23
June-0.130.220.28
September

Get Fire Your Stock Analyst!: Analyzing Stocks on Your Own now with the O’Reilly learning platform.

O’Reilly members experience books, live events, courses curated by job role, and more from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers.