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Epicor Shares Up After Results, Outlook

Shares of Irvine’s Epicor Software Corp., a maker of business software, rose Friday, a day after the company reported solid fourth-quarter results.

Investors sent shares up more than 5% in early afternoon New York trading on a recent market value of $490 million.

The stock move reverses losses that Epicor saw in afterhours trading Thursday, when analysts’ dinged the company for an outlook in line with—but not surpassing—Wall Street’s expectations for the current quarter.

For the first quarter, Epicor said it’s looking for profits of $6 million to $7 million, in line with analysts’ expectation of $6 million in profits.

The company is expecting sales of $98 million to $100 million, in line with analysts’ expectation of $99 million in sales.

Analysts seem to be focusing instead on the improvement Epicor saw during the final quarter of the year.

The company appears to be having some success with its newest software suite, dubbed Epicor 9, which was launched at the end of 2008 but had a tough time getting off the ground initially.

“End markets appear to be stabilizing, aided in part by continued traction with Epicor 9 which represented 75% of 149 new-name customers,” Joel Fishbein, an analyst at Lazard Capital Markets LLC in New York.

Fishbein said in a note to clients that he was “feeling better about business in general as Epicor 9 starting to gain some traction. Epicor 9 posted a solid quarter, adding over 100 customers, and eight of the top ten new contracts were for Epicor 9.”

Epicor’s fourth-quarter results, which were reported after the close of trading yesterday, came in down from a year earlier but beat analysts’ expectations.

For the three months through December, Epicor reported $112 million in sales, down 8% and beating analysts’ expectation of $105 million in sales.

Excluding charges for stock compensation, income taxes and other costs, the company posted profits of $11 million, down 21% and ahead of analysts’ expected $9 million in profits.

The company makes what’s known as enterprise resource planning software, which helps midsize retailers, manufacturers and others manage accounting, customer contacts, inventory, sales and other back-office tasks.

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