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Twenty-First Century Fox (FOXA) Q1 Earnings: What's Up?

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Twenty-First Century Fox, Inc. (FOXA - Free Report) is scheduled to report first-quarter fiscal 2017 results on Nov 2. In the previous quarter, the company’s earnings surpassed the Zacks Consensus Estimate by a margin of 25%.

Notably, in the trailing four quarters, the company surpassed the Zacks Consensus Estimate by an average of 6.9%. Let’s see how things are shaping up prior to this announcement.

Zacks Model Shows Unlikely Earnings Beat

Our proven model does not conclusively show that Twenty-First Century Fox is likely to beat earnings estimates this quarter. This is because a stock needs to have both a positive Earnings ESP and a Zacks Rank #1 (Strong Buy), 2 (Buy) or 3 (Hold) for this to happen. Twenty-First Century Fox has an Earnings ESP of 0.00% as both the Most Accurate estimate and the Zacks Consensus Estimate stand at 44 cents. The company carries a Zacks Rank #3, which increases the predictive power of ESP but an ESP of 0.00% makes surprise prediction difficult.

Please check our Earnings ESP Filter that enables you to find stocks that are expected to come out with earnings surprises.

Factors Influencing This Quarter

The performance of Cable Network Programming has been magnificent in fiscal 2015 and 2016 owing to rising affiliate fees. Affiliate fees are the leading source of revenue for the Cable Network segment as well as a major contributor to total revenues. The company said that the pace of affiliate fees will accelerate in the back half of the fiscal year as 15–20% of the company’s domestic subscribers will be up for annual renewal in the couple of years. The upcoming renewal is scheduled in early-calendar 2017.

In the fourth-quarter fiscal 2016, the company’s expenses rose 15% primarily due to hiked sports programming costs owing to soccer rights costs at FNG International as well as Major League Baseball and streaming rights costs at the RSNs. The company anticipates costs at Cable Network to go up in fiscal 2017. Increase in expenses may dent the company’s margins and consequently the bottom line in the first quarter and the succeeding quarters.

TWENTY-FST CF-A Price, Consensus and EPS Surprise

 

TWENTY-FST CF-A Price, Consensus and EPS Surprise | TWENTY-FST CF-A Quote

Stocks Poised to Beat Earnings Estimates

Here are some companies you may want to consider as our model shows that these have the right combination of elements to post an earnings beat:

Nexstar Broadcasting Group, Inc. (NXST - Free Report) has an Earnings ESP of +12.64% and a Zacks Rank #2. You can see the complete list of today’s Zacks #1 Rank stocks here.

Starz has an Earnings ESP of +19.23% and a Zacks Rank #3.

Time Warner Inc. has an Earnings ESP of +0.74% and a Zacks Rank #3.

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