On the heels of its strong second-quarter earnings announcement, Express Scripts (ESRX) closed at an all-time high on Wednesday.
The pharmacy benefit manager’s earnings of 88 cents per share exceeded analyst expectations. It also boosted its 2012 earnings guidance, to a high of $3.75 per share from $3.66 a share.
That combination was enough to give the stock the extra jolt it needed to surpass $60 a share for the first time in more than a year and close at a record $60.73 a share.
Express Scripts wasn’t the only company to establish a new 52-week high yesterday.
Here were several other large-cap stocks that reached their high-water mark for the year:
- Exxon (XOM): Oil prices have bounced back. Not surprisingly, so too have shares of the world’s largest oil company. The stock has now surged roughly 5% since July 24 – riding crude oil prices’ run to a three-month high.
- Chevron (CVX): Closed at a new 52-week high of $112.14 a share. See above for the reason why.
- Disney (DIS): Two words: “The Avengers.”
- New York Times (NYT): A newspaper company whose stock is doing well? That’s exactly right. But it has little to do with newspaper sales. In a departure from its “Old Gray Lady” reputation, the Times made its money this time through one of its web sites, electing to sell About.com – which it owns – to rival Answers.com for $270 million. The sale pushed the stock up 5.7% yesterday to jump to $8.56 a share – the highest it’s been in more than a year.
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