CORONA, Calif. (AP) _ Monster Beverage Corp. (MNST) on Thursday reported first-quarter earnings of $278.8 million.

On a per-share basis, the Corona, California-based company said it had profit of 52 cents.

The results surpassed Wall Street expectations. The average estimate of eight analysts surveyed by Zacks Investment Research was for earnings of 48 cents per share.

The energy drink maker posted revenue of $1.06 billion in the period, also exceeding Street forecasts. Five analysts surveyed by Zacks expected $997 million.

Monster Beverage shares have dropped slightly more than 2% since the beginning of the year, while the Standard & Poor's 500 index has dropped 11%. In the final minutes of trading on Thursday, shares hit $62.09, a climb of roughly 1% in the last 12 months.

This story was generated by Automated Insights (http://automatedinsights.com/ap) using data from Zacks Investment Research. Access a Zacks stock report on MNST at https://www.zacks.com/ap/MNST

Automated Insights, source Associated Press News