Diamonds and Dogs

2/22/17

Garmin (GRMN) is back on track. The maker of navigation, fitness and outdoor recreation devices is up 6% not far from a 52 week high following better than expected earnings. Garmin earned 73 cents a share excluding items, down 1% from the year-earlier quarter, on sales of $861 million, up 10%. The company's largest product segment, fitness devices, saw sales rise 20% to $274 million. Its second-largest group, automotive, saw sales fall 17% to $227 million and was the only one of the company's five segments to decline in the fourth quarter.

Too many pizza places. Papa John's (PZZA) is down 7% following earnings. The company actually beat earnings estimates, and sales rose 5% to $440 million, but posted weaker-than-expected same-store sales growth for the fourth quarter and forecasted difficult comparisons in the next quarter. North American same-store sales actually grew 3.8 percent in the fourth-quarter for the pizza chain — the second best among the top 25 U.S. restaurant chains that have reported fourth-quarter earnings so far. However, analysts had expected growth of 5.9 percent.