WILMINGTON, Del. (AP) _ Navient Corp. (NAVI) on Tuesday reported fourth-quarter earnings of $171 million.

On a per-share basis, the Wilmington, Delaware-based company said it had profit of 78 cents. Earnings, adjusted for non-recurring gains, came to 67 cents per share.

The results topped Wall Street expectations. The average estimate of four analysts surveyed by Zacks Investment Research was for earnings of 57 cents per share.

The student loan servicing company posted revenue of $1.29 billion in the period. Its adjusted revenue was $294 million, falling short of Street forecasts. Three analysts surveyed by Zacks expected $298.3 million.

For the year, the company reported profit of $597 million, or $2.56 per share. Revenue was reported as $1.19 billion.

Navient shares have risen slightly more than 1% since the beginning of the year, while the Standard & Poor's 500 index has increased roughly 3%. In the final minutes of trading on Tuesday, shares hit $13.86, a rise of 27% 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 NAVI at https://www.zacks.com/ap/NAVI

Automated Insights, source Associated Press News