Chocolate company Hershey (NYSE: HSY) will be announcing earnings results this Thursday before market hours. Here’s what investors should know.
Hershey beat analysts’ revenue expectations last quarter, reporting revenues of $3.09 billion, up 7% year on year. It was an exceptional quarter for the company, with a solid beat of analysts’ EBITDA estimates and full-year EPS guidance exceeding analysts’ expectations.
Is Hershey a buy or sell going into earnings? Read our full analysis here, it’s free for active Edge members.
This quarter, the market is expecting Hershey’s revenue to grow 8% year on year, a reversal from the 13.8% decrease it recorded in the same quarter last year.
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. Hershey has missed Wall Street’s revenue estimates multiple times over the last two years.
Looking at Hershey’s peers in the shelf-stable food segment, some have already reported their Q1 results, giving us a hint as to what we can expect. Lamb Weston delivered year-on-year revenue growth of 2.9%, beating analysts’ expectations by 5.2%, and McCormick reported revenues up 16.7%, topping estimates by 5.1%. Lamb Weston traded down 6.9% following the results while McCormick was also down 9.9%.
Read our full analysis of Lamb Weston’s results here and McCormick’s results here.
There has been positive sentiment among investors in the shelf-stable food segment, with share prices up 4% on average over the last month. Hershey is down 10.9% during the same time and is heading into earnings with an average analyst price target of $224.61 (compared to the current share price of $190.25).
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