Industrial supplier Fastenal (NASDAQ:FAST) will be reporting results this Tuesday morning. Here’s what to look for.
Fastenal met analysts’ revenue expectations last quarter, reporting revenues of $2.13 billion, up 11.7% year on year. It was a slower quarter for the company, with EPS in line with analysts’ estimates and a miss of analysts’ EBITDA estimates.
Is Fastenal a buy or sell going into earnings? Read our full analysis here, it’s free for active Edge members.
This quarter, analysts are expecting Fastenal’s revenue to grow 11.5% year on year to $2.03 billion, improving from the 3.7% increase it recorded in the same quarter last year. Adjusted earnings are expected to come in at $0.26 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. Fastenal has missed Wall Street’s revenue estimates four times over the last two years.
Looking at Fastenal’s peers in the industrial distributors segment, some have already reported their Q4 results, giving us a hint as to what we can expect. MSC Industrial delivered year-on-year revenue growth of 4%, meeting analysts’ expectations, and Richardson Electronics reported revenues up 5.7%, topping estimates by 4.8%. MSC Industrial traded down 1.2% following the results while Richardson Electronics was also down 11.8%.
Read our full analysis of MSC Industrial’s results here and Richardson Electronics’s results here.
There has been positive sentiment among investors in the industrial distributors segment, with share prices up 8.8% on average over the last month. Fastenal is up 4.7% during the same time and is heading into earnings with an average analyst price target of $44 (compared to the current share price of $43.68).
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