Why Badger Meter Stock Plunged Today
Shares of leading water solutions provider Badger Meter (NYSE: BMI) plunged 9% as of 12:30 p.m. ET Thursday, according to data provided by S&P Global Market Intelligence.
This drop comes in spite of the "smart water" industry specialist announcing sales, earnings-per-share, and cash from operations growth of 12%, 23%, and 43% on its third-quarter earnings call this morning. Despite these otherwise impressive results, Badger missed analysts' expectations on the top line and guided for high-single-digit sales growth going forward, spurring the adverse reaction from the market.
Providing flow measurement, water quality and control, and communications offerings (for its devices' cloud connectivity), Badger Meter is taking the $20 billion smart water industry by storm. However, after growing sales between 23% and 26% in each of the previous four quarters -- and with the company's valuation at nearly 60 times earnings before today's decline -- Badger needed to deliver perfect results and came up shy.
Source Fool.com
