Icon Has the Luck of the Irish

These medical contract research organizations continue to post good numbers across the board; as the chart below shows, Icon (ICLR) which is an Irish player in the field, completely shook off the January selloff...

• Net revenues for the quarter were $180.7 million, representing a 40.1% increase over net revenues of $128.9 million for the same quarter last year. (analysts in at $172.5M)
• Net income was $15.8 million or 53 cents per share on a diluted basis, compared with $11.4 million or 39 cents per share last year. (analysts at $0.50)
• Record net bookings of $344m in the fourth quarter led to bookings for the full year of over $1billion, another major milestone for ICON. As a consequence, we have a record backlog of $1.3 billion, which gives us confidence as we enter our new fiscal year.

I've been looking at these names over the past quarter, but have been hesitating due to valuation. However, they seem to have quite a bit of momentum, and increasing backlogs which gives us the long term visibility we like - for example Icon now has 2 years worth of business in backlog.

So much like an infrastructure company we have a lot of confidence about the future. My only holding in this group is the Chinese version WuXi Pharmatech (WUXI) which has been relatively comatose of late.

Disclosure: Long WuXi Pharmatech in fund; no personal position