Barack Obama’s intended assault on gun owners has elicited precisely the reverse of what he hoped; on Tuesday, Smith & Wesson’s stock soared 7.35% to $24.99 in pre-market trading, following the company’s raising of its third quarter and fiscal 2016 guidance Monday night.
Smith & Wesson had estimated revenue for the period between the beginning of November and the end of January to range from $150 million and $155 million, but revised its estimate upward to $175-$180 million. The previous estimate of adjusted earnings for that period ranged between 27 cents per share and 29 cents per share, but was revised upward to between 39 cents per share to 41 cents per share.
The ascent of Barack Obama, with his anti-gun rhetoric, has precipitated a surge in gun sales, as noted by Huffington Post in December 2013:
Sturm, Ruger & Co., the largest publicly traded gunmaker, saw its net sales for the first nine months of 2013 jump 44 percent to $506.4 million, from $350 million in the same period a year ago, according to Securities and Exchange Commission filings. The company’s profits for the first three quarters of the year surged 66 percent to $84.7 million, from $50.8 million over the same period last year … Smith & Wesson’s net sales climbed nearly one-third from the same period in 2012, and its profits jumped more than 70 percent.
As The Washington Post glumly titled an article in March 2015, “Barack Obama has likely given a $9 billion boost to the gun industry (at least).”
The Obama Administration told reporters Monday night that Obama’s imminent executive order may require someone selling a single firearm to obtain a Federal Firearms License.