Procter & Gamble (PG) Hits Four-Year High after Earnings

At last, some good earnings news.

Procter & Gamble (NYSE: PG) easily beat forecasts for its fiscal first-quarter earnings today, pushing the stock above $70 a share for the first time since September 2008.

The company’s core earnings of $1.06 per share exceeded its own estimates of 97 cents a share. That was up five cents from the $1.01 per share in core earnings P&G brought in a year ago.

However, core earnings don’t take into account unfavorable foreign exchange rates weighing on the company’s profits. When adding in the financial hit P&G took due to exchange rates, earnings were down 6.9% from a year ago and revenue declined 4%. Net sales for the quarter also slipped 3.7%.

Fortunately for P&G, investors chose to focus on the core earnings. That was enough to push the stock up nearly 3% – a sizable one-day gain for a stock that, until today, had traded in the same $58-to-$69 range for the past three years.

In an earnings season marred by high-profile misses from the likes of Google (NASDAQ: GOOG), Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT), McDonald’s (NYSE: MCD) and Chipotle (NYSE: CMG), Procter & Gamble’s beat stands as a much-needed bright spot – even if the earnings were technically down from a year ago.

*Disclosure: I personally own shares of Procter & Gamble.