O’Reilly Auto stock nears $300 on high earnings

When the market opened this morning, O’Reilly Automotive Inc. (Nasdaq: ORLY) shares shot up to a new 52-week high on high second-quarter earnings and same-store sales announced yesterday.

The company’s stock reached a 52-week high of $292.84, up 5.5 percent from yesterday’s closing price of $277.51. This morning’s jump eclipsed the previous high of $284.66 set two days earlier, ahead of the quarterly report.

During the quarter ended June 30, O’Reilly Automotive posted net income of $257.8 million, or $2.65 per diluted share, a 10.4 percent increase compared with $233.5 million, or $2.29 per diluted share, a year earlier, according to a news release.

Quarterly revenue moved up 6.9 percent to $2.2 billion from $2 billion.

“For the second quarter, our focus on customer service generated a 4.3 percent increase in comparable store sales, which was on top of a 7.2 percent increase from the second quarter of 2015, and was above the midpoint of our second-quarter guidance range,” O’Reilly Automotive President and CEO Greg Henslee said in the release.

Second-quarter financial notes:
    •    O’Reilly Automotive repurchased 2.1 million shares of its common stock at an average price of $262.17, representing an investment of $544 million.
    •    The company opened 38 new stores and closed one, resulting in a store count of 4,660.
    •    Total employment grew 3.2 percent to 74,067 associates.

O’Reilly Automotive's assets at the end of the quarter totaled $7.2 billion, and liabilities were $3.4 billion, according to the release.