Equipment distributor Watsco (NYSE: WSO) will be reporting results this Tuesday before market hours. Here’s what to look for.
Watsco missed analysts’ revenue expectations by 2.6% last quarter, reporting revenues of $2.07 billion, down 4.3% year on year. It was a disappointing quarter for the company, with a significant miss of analysts’ revenue estimates and a significant miss of analysts’ adjusted operating income estimates.
Is Watsco a buy or sell going into earnings? Read our full analysis here, it’s free for active Edge members.
This quarter, analysts are expecting Watsco’s revenue to decline 8.2% year on year to $1.61 billion, a reversal from the 9.4% increase it recorded in the same quarter last year. Adjusted earnings are expected to come in at $1.89 per share.
Analysts covering the company have generally reconfirmed their estimates over the last 30 days, suggesting they anticipate the business to stay the course heading into earnings.
Looking at Watsco’s peers in the industrial distributors segment, some have already reported their Q4 results, giving us a hint as to what we can expect. Richardson Electronics delivered year-on-year revenue growth of 5.7%, beating analysts’ expectations by 4.8%, and SiteOne reported revenues up 3.2%, falling short of estimates by 0.9%. Richardson Electronics traded down 11.7% following the results while SiteOne was up 7%.
Read our full analysis of Richardson Electronics’s results here and SiteOne’s results here.
There has been positive sentiment among investors in the industrial distributors segment, with share prices up 8.1% on average over the last month. Watsco is up 10.9% during the same time and is heading into earnings with an average analyst price target of $395.58 (compared to the current share price of $418.07).
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