Whole Foods Beats the Street in Q3, Shares Up 17%

What a day for Whole Foods (NASDAQ:WFMI) proving that the demand is still alive for natural foods with a 3% increase in Q3 sales numbers.  WFMI shares are up $4.26 or 17% in early trading.

The company which is the leading organic and natural foods grocer made $35 million, or 25 cents a share during the quarter. That's up from $34 million, or 24 cents a share a year ago. Analysts polled by Thompson Financial had anticipated earnings of 20 cents a share.  The five day move on WFMI shares is huge as short sellers got trapped on this one after Whole Foods (NASDAQ: WFMI) logged revenue of $1.9 billion, up from $1.8 billion in the year-earlier quarter.

"We are very pleased with our third quarter top-line and bottom-line results," said Chairman and CEO John Mackey. "We saw our first sequential improvement in comparable store and identical store sales trends in six quarters driven by both average transaction count and basket size trends." said John Mackey, chairman, chief executive officer, and co-founder of Whole Foods Market.

Mackey credits the company striking the right balance between sales and gross margins and its strong cost control for producing a 23 percent increase in income from operations.

Whole Foods has roughly 51,000 employees worldwide and operates more than 275 stores in the United States, Canada and the United Kingdom. It has seven stores in metro Atlanta.

WFMI is enjoying a short squeeze fueled rally, congrats longs.