Cerner Corp., Kansas City, Mo., on Tuesday lowered its revenue expectations for 2016 while reporting strong fourth-quarter and full-year earnings and revenue growth for 2015.
The health information technology company said it expects first-quarter revenue between $1.15 billion and $1.2 billion and 2016 revenue between $4.9 billion and $5.1 billion. The company previously put its 2016 revenue at over $5 billion.
Cerner's share prices fell more than 17% in after-hours trading before recovering slightly.
The company reported a 27% increase in revenue in the last three months of 2015 compared with the year-ago period, and its full-year revenue grew 30% over 2014 to $4.4 billion.
Cerner President Zane Burke was upbeat about the results. “Our fourth-quarter results reflect a solid finish to a record year,” he said in a news release. The company touted in the release that its bookings for the fourth quarter of 2015 were up 16% over the same period of 2014.
"While that is a healthy growth rate, it is below our guided range," Burke acknowledged in a call with analysts.
In December, Iasis Healthcare announced plans to switch its hospitals and health facilities to Cerner's Millennium electronic health-record platform. The project will cost $50 million and will be completed by March 2018.
Cerner also will soon benefit from significant business with the federal government. The U.S. Army awarded it a contract for pathology department laboratory software and the Defense Department's Military Health System awarded a partnership among Cerner, Leidos and Accenture a 10-year contract to install an EHR system across its 56 hospitals and more than 300 clinics.
Cerner announced last month that CEO Neal Patterson is being treated for cancer.
