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Paychex shares lose ground after hours

LOS ANGELES (MarketWatch) -- Shares of Paychex Inc. lost ground Wednesday evening, with quarterly revenue from the payroll-processing software and services company falling short of Wall Street's projection.

Paychex (PAYX) shares were off 1.9% at $31.31 in choppy trading after the company said fiscal fourth-quarter total revenue was $551.5 million. Sales were up 6% from $522.7 million a year ago, but were lower than the $557.6 million expected by analysts polled by FactSet.

Earnings of 34 cents a share for the most recent period matched Wall Street's expectations, and were up by a penny a share from a year ago.

Paychex's shares heading into the late-trading session rose 0.5%, bringing their gain to 6% over the past year. Stock in rival Automatic Data Processing Inc. (ADP) was unchanged in evening trade at $54.48.

In the regular session, U.S. stocks extended gains into a second day after better-than-expected domestic economic data and a respite from headlines from troubled Europe ahead of a two-day gathering of European leaders in Brussels. Read more about U.S. stocks in Market Snapshot.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJIA) rose 92 points, or 0.7%, to 12,6247.01 The S&P 500 Index (SPX) ended 0.9% higher at 1,331.85 and the Nasdaq Composite Index (COMP) advanced 0.7% to 2,875.32.