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What to Expect From Santander Consumer's (SC) Q1 Earnings?

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Santander Consumer USA Holdings Inc. is scheduled to report first-quarter 2018 results on Apr 24, before the market opens. While its earnings for the quarter are projected to remain stable year over year, revenues are expected to decline.

In the last reported quarter, the company’s earnings lagged the Zacks Consensus Estimate. Elevated expenses, and lower net finance and other interest income hurt the results.

Nonetheless, the company has a decent earnings surprise history. Its earnings surpassed the Zacks Consensus Estimate in three of the trailing four quarters, with an average beat of 12.8%.

Notably, activities of the company in the first quarter failed to win analysts’ confidence. As a result, the Zacks Consensus Estimate for earnings of 40 cents declined 2.4% over the last 30 days.

Further, Santander Consumer USA’s price performance has been disappointing. Its shares have lost 15.8% so far this year compared with a 5.6% decline for the industry it belongs to.

Will the dismal price performance continue post first-quarter earnings release or will the trend reverse? It depends on the company’s ability to impress the market with improved financials.

Factors to Impact Q1 Results

Management expects net finance and other interest income to be flat or up 2% sequentially, driven by origination volume. Total other income is projected to be up $55 million to $75 million, given the seasonality and lower Bluestem balances.

In fact, the Zacks Consensus Estimate for sales is $1.61 billion for the quarter, which reflects a decline of 1.1% year over year.

Management expects operating expenses to be in the range of $289-$309 million in the to-be-reported quarter. This is up from adjusted expenses of $269 million recorded in fourth-quarter 2017.

Driven by improving credit performance and depending on new originations, provision expenses are expected to be down $20 million from the prior quarter. Further, the company expects hurricane benefits to reverse mostly in the first quarter.

Now, let’s take a look at what our quantitative model predicts:

Our quantitative model shows that chances of Santander Consumer USA beating the earnings estimates this time are low. That’s because it does not have the right combination of two key ingredients — a positive Earnings ESP and Zacks Rank #3 (Hold) or higher — for increasing the odds of an earnings beat.

You can uncover the best stocks to buy or sell before they’re reported with our Earnings ESP Filter.

Zacks ESP: The Earnings ESP for Santander Consumer USA is +1.72%.

Zacks Rank: Santander Consumer USA has a Zacks Rank #5 (Strong Sell), which decreases the predictive power of ESP.

Stocks That Warrant a Look

Here are a few finance stocks that you may want to consider as our model shows that these have the right combination of elements to post an earnings beat in their upcoming releases:

Capital One Financial Corporation (COF - Free Report) has an Earnings ESP of +0.79% and carries a Zacks Rank of 3. The company is slated to release results on Apr 24.

BOK Financial Corporation (BOKF - Free Report) is slated to report first-quarter 2018 results on Apr 25. It has an Earnings ESP of +0.24% and a Zacks Rank of 2 (Buy). You can see the complete list of today’s Zacks #1 Rank (Strong Buy) stocks here.

SVB Financial Group is scheduled to release results on Apr 26. It has an Earnings ESP of +1.38% and a Zacks Rank #3.

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