By Motley Fool

Winter is just a distant memory for residents of the Northern Hemisphere, but investors in ski resort company Vail Resorts have waited with anticipation to see how the late-winter months treated the company’s key winter business. With the vast majority of its properties seeing their high season in the December to March time frame, Vail Resorts gets a huge portion of its annual revenue and earnings at this time of year.

Coming into today’s fiscal third-quarter financial report, Vail Resorts investors were expecting to see sizable growth in revenue and earnings, and the company did a good job of delivering on both fronts.

Vail Resorts’ fiscal third-quarter results were roughly in line with the expectations that investors had for the ski resort operator. Revenue climbed 12 percent to $647.5 million, which was only slightly less than the $653 million consensus forecast among those following the stock. Net income jumped at a faster pace of 18 percent to $157.6 million, and that produced earnings of $4.23 per share. The figure was $0.03 per share better than investors had expected, even after having raised their expectations gradually over the past few months.

Read the whole story