Heartland Payment Systems, Inc.

This provider of payment processing services has put together five straight quarters of better-than-expected profit, and now we are less than a month away from its second-quarter report. At the moment, the Zacks Consensus Estimate for the quarter is 40 cents per share. There hasn’t been any movement in earnings estimates over the past 30 days, but that guidance is up 2.6% from two months ago.

In its first-quarter announcement from early May, HPY reported earnings per share of 34 cents, which was nearly 42% better than the Zacks Consensus Estimate. That continued its string of quarterly earnings beats, which have averaged almost 25% in the past five quarters.

Revenue moved higher by 1% to $470.5 million.

However, the best news of the quarter, as far as its Zacks Rank is concerned, was its outlook for the full year. HPY raised its adjusted earnings guidance to between $1.59 and $1.63, compared to its earlier expectation of $1.52 to $1.56. The revenue outlook stayed put at $530 million to $540 million.

You can see the impact of that raised guidance. The Zacks Consensus Estimate for this year is now $1.46 per share, or 7.4% better than two months ago. Meanwhile, the Zacks Consensus Estimate for next year has gained 8.8% to $1.74, suggesting year-over-year growth of more than 19%.

Heartland Payment Systems, Inc. provides bank card-based payment processing services to small- and medium- sized merchants in the United States. Heartland facilitates the exchange of information and funds between merchants and cardholders' financial institutions, providing end-to- end electronic payment processing services to merchants, including merchant setup and training, transaction authorization and electronic draft capture, clearing and settlement, merchant accounting, merchant assistance and support and risk management.