Pharmacy chain Walgreens Boots Alliance (NASDAQ: WBA) will be announcing earnings results this Thursday before market open. Here’s what to look for.
Walgreens beat analysts’ revenue expectations by 2.2% last quarter, reporting revenues of $38.59 billion, up 4.1% year on year. It was a stunning quarter for the company, with an impressive beat of analysts’ EBITDA estimates and a solid beat of analysts’ same-store sales estimates.
Is Walgreens a buy or sell going into earnings? Read our full analysis here, it’s free.
This quarter, analysts are expecting Walgreens’s revenue to be flat year on year at $36.59 billion, slowing from the 2.6% increase it recorded in the same quarter last year. Adjusted earnings are expected to come in at $0.34 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. Walgreens has a history of exceeding Wall Street’s expectations, beating revenue estimates every single time over the past two years by 3.5% on average.
Looking at Walgreens’s peers in the consumer retail segment, some have already reported their Q2 results, giving us a hint as to what we can expect. CarMax delivered year-on-year revenue growth of 6.1%, meeting analysts’ expectations, and Costco reported revenues up 8%, in line with consensus estimates. CarMax traded up 4.5% following the results while Costco was also up 3.1%.
Read our full analysis of CarMax’s results here and Costco’s results here.
Investors in the consumer retail segment have had fairly steady hands going into earnings, with share prices down 1.5% on average over the last month. Walgreens is up 1.6% during the same time and is heading into earnings with an average analyst price target of $12.41 (compared to the current share price of $11.39).
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