Shares of Aliso Viejo business software maker Quest Software Corp. continued their runup on Tuesday, a day after the company reported second-quarter profits that topped expectations and offered some upbeat comments about the current quarter.
Quest’s shares closed up nearly 8% on a market value of $1.5 billion.
The bullish run comes a day after Quest posted results that came in line with Wall Street’s expectations on sales but beat on profits.
Excluding charges for stock compensation, restructuring, acquisitions and other costs, the company posted profits of $28 million, up 55% from a year earlier and beating analysts’ expected $19 million in profits.
Quest reported sales of $164 million, down 5% and just shy of analysts’ expected $165 million in sales.
The company didn’t give an outlook for the current quarter. In a conference call with analysts and investors, executives offered some encouraging words.
“We are seeing very early signs of budgets going up slightly in Q3, which is a good sign,” Chief Executive Doug Garn said.
For the three months through September, Wall Street is looking for profits of $26 million on sales of $176 million.
Quest’s software builds on and improves database management software from Microsoft Corp., Oracle Corp. and others.
