Chocolate company Hershey (NYSE:HSY) will be reporting earnings tomorrow before market hours. Here’s what investors should know.
Hershey missed analysts’ revenue expectations by 10.6% last quarter, reporting revenues of $2.07 billion, down 16.7% year on year. It was a disappointing quarter for the company, with a miss of analysts’ organic revenue growth and EBITDA estimates.
Is Hershey a buy or sell going into earnings? Read our full analysis here, it’s free.
This quarter, analysts are expecting Hershey’s revenue to grow 1.4% year on year to $3.07 billion, slowing from the 11.1% increase it recorded in the same quarter last year. Adjusted earnings are expected to come in at $2.55 per share.
Heading into earnings, analysts covering the company have grown increasingly bearish with revenue estimates seeing 10 downward revisions over the last 30 days (we track 14 analysts). Hershey has missed Wall Street’s revenue estimates three times over the last two years.
Looking at Hershey’s peers in the shelf-stable food segment, some have already reported their Q3 results, giving us a hint as to what we can expect. SunOpta delivered year-on-year revenue growth of 15.5%, beating analysts’ expectations by 1.8%, and Mondelez reported revenues up 4%, in line with consensus estimates. Mondelez’s stock price was unchanged following the results.
Read our full analysis of SunOpta’s results here and Mondelez’s results here.
Investors in the shelf-stable food segment have had steady hands going into earnings, with share prices up 1.2% on average over the last month. Hershey is down 3.5% during the same time and is heading into earnings with an average analyst price target of $195.32 (compared to the current share price of $180.98).
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