Gentex Misses A Bit (GNTX)

Gentex Corporation (NASDAQ: GNTX) is down after earnings this morning, but things are not looking as bad as they were shortly before the opening bell.  The maker of advanced mirrors for cars and other auto parts posted light earnings but it gave an upside to its sales guidance.  Its fourth quarter earnings hit $0.28 per share versus the $0.30 estimate from Thomson Reuters.  Sales rose 17% to $260.3 million, but estimates were more than $273 million.

For the first quarter it is targeting 15% to 20% sales growth and it expects that unit shipments of its SmartBeam high beam headlamp assist product will increase by approximately 40% to 45% in the full year of 2012.

Gentex was down about 5% pre-market, but now that the market is open we have shares down 3.5% at $29.04 against a 52-week range of $21.84 to $32.97.  This one is hard to measure as being good, but perhaps the market is not going to treat Gentex quite as bad as it looked earlier on.