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Yahoo
24-04-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Gorman-Rupp (NYSE:GRC) Misses Q1 Sales Targets
Gorman-Rupp (NYSE:GRC) manufactures and sells pumps globally. missed Wall Street's revenue expectations in Q1 CY2025 as sales rose 2.9% year on year to $163.9 million. Its GAAP profit of $0.46 per share was 4.5% above analysts' consensus estimates. Is now the time to buy Gorman-Rupp? Find out in our full research report. Revenue: $163.9 million vs analyst estimates of $164.8 million (2.9% year-on-year growth, 0.5% miss) EPS (GAAP): $0.46 vs analyst estimates of $0.44 (4.5% beat) Adjusted EBITDA: $29.7 million vs analyst estimates of $28.62 million (18.1% margin, 3.8% beat) Operating Margin: 13.5%, in line with the same quarter last year Free Cash Flow Margin: 11%, up from 4.3% in the same quarter last year Backlog: $217.8 million at quarter end Market Capitalization: $874.4 million Powering fluid dynamics since 1934, Gorman-Rupp (NYSE:GRC) has evolved from its Ohio origins into a global manufacturer and seller of pumps and pump systems. Gas and liquid handling companies possess the technical know-how and specialized equipment to handle valuable (and sometimes dangerous) substances. Lately, water conservation and carbon capture–which requires hydrogen and other gasses as well as specialized infrastructure–have been trending up, creating new demand for products such as filters, pumps, and valves. On the other hand, gas and liquid handling companies are at the whim of economic cycles. Consumer spending and interest rates, for example, can greatly impact the industrial production that drives demand for these companies' offerings. A company's long-term performance is an indicator of its overall quality. Any business can put up a good quarter or two, but the best consistently grow over the long haul. Thankfully, Gorman-Rupp's 11.1% annualized revenue growth over the last five years was impressive. Its growth beat the average industrials company and shows its offerings resonate with customers, a helpful starting point for our analysis. We at StockStory place the most emphasis on long-term growth, but within industrials, a half-decade historical view may miss cycles, industry trends, or a company capitalizing on catalysts such as a new contract win or a successful product line. Gorman-Rupp's recent performance shows its demand has slowed significantly as its annualized revenue growth of 7.1% over the last two years was well below its five-year trend. This quarter, Gorman-Rupp's revenue grew by 2.9% year on year to $163.9 million, falling short of Wall Street's estimates. Looking ahead, sell-side analysts expect revenue to grow 4.1% over the next 12 months, a slight deceleration versus the last two years. This projection is underwhelming and suggests its products and services will see some demand headwinds. At least the company is tracking well in other measures of financial health. Today's young investors likely haven't read the timeless lessons in Gorilla Game: Picking Winners In High Technology because it was written more than 20 years ago when Microsoft and Apple were first establishing their supremacy. But if we apply the same principles, then enterprise software stocks leveraging their own generative AI capabilities may well be the Gorillas of the future. So, in that spirit, we are excited to present our Special Free Report on a profitable, fast-growing enterprise software stock that is already riding the automation wave and looking to catch the generative AI next. Operating margin is an important measure of profitability as it shows the portion of revenue left after accounting for all core expenses – everything from the cost of goods sold to advertising and wages. It's also useful for comparing profitability across companies with different levels of debt and tax rates because it excludes interest and taxes. Gorman-Rupp has managed its cost base well over the last five years. It demonstrated solid profitability for an industrials business, producing an average operating margin of 11.6%. This result was particularly impressive because of its low gross margin, which is mostly a factor of what it sells and takes huge shifts to move meaningfully. Companies have more control over their operating margins, and it's a show of well-managed operations if they're high when gross margins are low. Analyzing the trend in its profitability, Gorman-Rupp's operating margin rose by 4.7 percentage points over the last five years, as its sales growth gave it operating leverage. This quarter, Gorman-Rupp generated an operating profit margin of 13.5%, in line with the same quarter last year. This indicates the company's cost structure has recently been stable. We track the long-term change in earnings per share (EPS) for the same reason as long-term revenue growth. Compared to revenue, however, EPS highlights whether a company's growth is profitable. Gorman-Rupp's EPS grew at an unimpressive 5.4% compounded annual growth rate over the last five years, lower than its 11.1% annualized revenue growth. However, its operating margin actually expanded during this time, telling us that non-fundamental factors such as interest expenses and taxes affected its ultimate earnings. Like with revenue, we analyze EPS over a shorter period to see if we are missing a change in the business. Gorman-Rupp's two-year annual EPS growth of 108% was fantastic and topped its 7.1% two-year revenue growth. In Q1, Gorman-Rupp reported EPS at $0.46, up from $0.30 in the same quarter last year. This print beat analysts' estimates by 4.5%. Over the next 12 months, Wall Street expects Gorman-Rupp's full-year EPS of $1.69 to grow 25.4%. We enjoyed seeing Gorman-Rupp beat analysts' EBITDA expectations this quarter. We were also happy its EPS outperformed Wall Street's estimates. On the other hand, its revenue slightly missed. Overall, this quarter had some key positives. The stock remained flat at $35.25 immediately after reporting. Should you buy the stock or not? When making that decision, it's important to consider its valuation, business qualities, as well as what has happened in the latest quarter. We cover that in our actionable full research report which you can read here, it's free. Sign in to access your portfolio
WIRED
15-04-2025
- WIRED
There's AI Inside Windows Paint and Notepad Now. Here's How to Use It
AI tools have arrived in two of the most basic and long-serving Windows utilities. Here's what they do and how you can turn them off if you prefer. Tech companies aren't holding back when it comes to stuffing artificial intelligence capabilities into every app and piece of hardware they can, and even the most basic software tools are getting their own AI upgrades—such as the long-serving Windows utilities Paint and Notepad. These two programs cover the two main bases of the generative AI revolution: image generation and text generation. If you need some AI-powered assistance in these venerable Windows apps, here's how you can access it. AI in Windows Paint Copilot will imagine anything you want in Paint. Courtesy of David Nield Windows Paint has traditionally stuck to the basics when it comes to image creation and image editing, but if you load up the application in Windows now, you'll see a Copilot button that leads you to three AI options: Image Creator (for generating new images), Generative Erase (for erasing parts of an image), and Remove Background (for taking away the background behind the main subject in an image). Choose Image Creator from the list, and you get a text prompt box you can use to describe what you want to see: anything from a giraffe on a beach to a spaceship in the shape of a pineapple. The more detail you include in your prompt, the better the match is likely to be. When your prompt is done, pick an image style from the drop-down menu, and click Create—then choose one of the AI generated thumbnails to apply it to the current image. Pick Generative Erase from the Copilot menu, and you can wipe objects and people out of your picture—maybe a pole that's ruining a view, for example. Select the + (plus) button to add to the selection, and the - (minus) button to take away from it, and use the slider on the left to change the size of your selection brush. When the selection is complete, click Apply—Paint will try to remove the selection using the surrounding pixels as clues for what the background should look like. Finally, there's the Remove Background option from the Copilot menu. This simply turns everything white, besides the main subject of your image—there are no tools or settings to play around with in this case. As you would expect, it works better for images where the main subject is more obvious, but the results can be impressive—and can save you a lot of manual image editing time. Note that while Generative Erase and Remove Background can be used for free, Image Creator uses up AI credits associated with your Microsoft account. You can't buy these separately, they come as part of a subscription to Microsoft 365 or Copilot Pro subscriptions, so use them wisely. You can read more about AI credits and how they work here. AI in Windows Notepad Get some Copilot help with your compositions in Notepad. Courtesy of David Nield Notepad is perhaps better known as a code editor than a word processor, but in recent years Microsoft has added more features in the way of formatting and auto-save. If you open it in Windows, you'll see these features as well as a Copilot button in the top-right corner of the interface. You can't use Copilot inside Notepad to generate new text, as you can in Copilot on the web or in other tools like ChatGPT. Instead, the feature lets you rewrite and tweak what you've already written—so before you click on the Copilot button, you need to put some text into Notepad and then select it. With the selection made, click the Copilot button, and you get a range of options: Make shorter and Make longer can obviously be used to change the length of the selected text, and you've also got a Change tone option if you want to make the text more inspirational, formal, casual, or humorous. There's also Change format, which lets you put the selected text into a different structure: A list, marketing speak, or poetry, for example. You can also choose Rewrite from this menu for a more comprehensive set of options—and to see previews of the rewritten text before it's applied. A new pop-up window appears, giving you more options for changing the length, tone, and format. You also get different variations to choose between in each case. When you find something you like, click Replace to swap it out for the existing text. At the time of writing, it seems Notepad is giving everyone a few AI-powered rewrites for free—but as with Image Creator in Paint, you're going to need some AI credits with a Microsoft 365 or Copilot Pro subscription to use this extensively. Of course, if you'd rather not use these AI tools and don't want to see the Copilot button hanging around, you can turn it off altogether: Click the gear icon (top right), then turn off the Copilot toggle switch.
