Cerner earnings jump 44.7 percent in second quarter

Cerner Corp. earnings jumped 44.7 percent in the second quarter thanks to an increased share of the market for electronic health records and strong sales in its population health business.

Its widely watched bookings of new business reached a record for the quarter and were up 8 percent from a year ago at $1.4 billion.

The North Kansas City-based company said Tuesday it continued to win new large customers, 45 of which will bring more than $5 million in business and 28 that will bring more than $10 million in business. Two of the new $5 million deals were for its population health business, HealtheIntent, which uses big data to improve health care outcomes.

Last fall, Cerner announced it had taken away a population health client from its largest rival Epic Systems Corp. During a conference call with analysts Tuesday, president Zane Burke said more have followed that client, Geisinger Health System, to Cerner’s HealtheIntent product.

“We’ve had a number of Epic clients that have made HealtheIntent decisions and signed contracts, and we just have not disclosed those separately,” Burke said.

During its second quarter that ended July 2, Cerner earned a $166.45 million profit, equal to 48 cents a share. A year ago, it earned $115.04 million, or 33 cents a share.

Revenues increased 8 percent from a year ago to $1.216 billion.

The company said it expects revenues in the current quarter to be at least $1.2 billion and could reach $1.275 billion. It estimated bookings for the July, August and September quarter at $1.45 billion to $1.6 billion.

Cerner said the pipeline of available business in the marketplace is at record levels.

This story was originally published August 2, 2016 at 3:19 PM with the headline "Cerner earnings jump 44.7 percent in second quarter."