Top Performer for Tues: Corp. Exec. Board (EXBD)

Shares of The Corporate Executive Board Company (EXBD - Analyst Report) are up approximately 9.5% Tuesday after receiving a brokerage upgrade. The firm believes that professional services companies may have reached the bottom in their demand shortfall during the summer.

Meanwhile, EXBD was able to surpass EPS expectations in its second quarter, and has enjoyed steady improvement in earnings estimates for several months. Volume today is at 167,000 shares, compared to the daily average of 210,000.

EXBD provides best practices research and analysis focusing on corporate strategy, operations and general management issues. It is one of 5 companies from the Business Services industry on today's 224-stock Zacks #1 Rank List. The other names are Cardtronics, Inc. (CATM - Snapshot Report), Lender Processing Services, Inc. (LPS - Analyst Report), TrueBlue, Inc. (TBI - Snapshot Report) and Wright Express Corporation (WXS - Snapshot Report).

Earnings Estimates

The Zacks Consensus Estimate for this year is currently $1.32 per share. TWo months ago, analysts were expecting $1.10, accounting for a gain of 20%. There has also been a 3.1% increase in the past 30 days.

Next year's Zacks Consensus Estimate is at $1.36, or 11.5% better than $1.22 from 2 months ago.

Second-Quarter Report

In early August, EXBD announced earnings per share, excluding items, of 41 cents for the second quarter. While that result fell short of the year-ago performance during a difficult environment, it was still able to beat the Zacks Consensus Estimate by more than 78%.

The company has now easily surpassed expectations in 2 straight quarters; it beat by nearly 54% in the first quarter.

However, revenues declined 21.6% to $110.7 million.

EXBD reaffirmed its guidance of adjusted EPS between 90 cents and $1.40 for 2009 with revenues of $410 million to $450 million.

"Our results reflect ongoing difficulty in the overall selling environment as well as some temporary disruption while we completed these changes," stated CEO Thomas Monahan.

(These "changes" include transitioning to a new account management model and moving to a new technology platform.)

"Nevertheless, we were encouraged by late-quarter momentum as the new model took hold, as well as by continued returns from our focused cost management," said Mr. Monahan.