AeroVironment Stock Is Flying Wednesday: What's Going On?

AeroVironment Inc AVAV shares are trading higher Wednesday after the company reported better-than-expected quarterly results and issued strong guidance. One analyst also upgraded the stock following the print.

Q1 Earnings: AeroVironment reported revenues of $152.3 million, up 40% year-over-year and ahead of the consensus estimate of $137.24 million, according to Benzinga Pro. The unmanned aircraft and robotics systems company reported quarterly earnings of $1 per share, which beat estimates of 40 cents per share. 

AeroVironment said strong revenues were driven by higher shipments across all business segments. Net income also jumped 361% to $21.9 million. The company ended the quarter with a backlog of $539.7 million, up 27% sequentially. 

"We took steps to further strengthen and expand our product portfolio through our previously announced acquisition of Tomahawk Robotics. This transaction – which is expected to close in the second quarter – will add common control solutions with advanced open standard communications technologies – namely the Kinesis Ecosystem – to our current AI enabled software suite," said Wahid Nawabi, chairman, president and CEO of AeroVironment. 

"We expect that this acquisition enhances AeroVironment's existing control and communications solutions, opens up adjacent market opportunities, enables multi-domain integration across all unmanned platforms, and brings additional top notch software engineering talent to our growing team."

Outlook: AeroVironment raised its full-year 2024 guidance. The company now expects full-year revenue to be between $645 million and $675 million versus estimates of $655.88 million. Full-year adjusted earnings are now expected to be between $2.30 and $2.60 per share versus estimates of $2.60 per share.

Following the company's quarterly results, Baird analyst Peter Arment upgraded AeroVironment from Neutral to Outperform and raised the price target from $95 to $128.

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AVAV Price Action: Aerovironment shares were up 16.3% at $110.81 at the time of writing, according to Benzinga Pro.

Photo: courtesy of AeroVironment.