Back to top

Image: Bigstock

Will Cleaning Unit Dent Prestige Brands' (PBH) Q1 Earnings?

Read MoreHide Full Article

Prestige Brands Holdings Inc. (PBH - Free Report) is set to report first-quarter fiscal 2019 results on Aug 2. This cleaning and healthcare products company has a mixed record of earnings surprises in the trailing four quarters. Let’s see how things are placed ahead of the upcoming quarterly results.

Buyouts Likely to Boost Performance

Prestige Brands actively pursues strategic mergers and acquisitions to expand business. It has completed five significant mergers since 2013 that have been yielding. Its largest acquisition — Fleet — generated sales of $175.4 million in 2018 and also drove fourth-quarter fiscal 2018 results. Further, brand building initiatives undertaken for Fleet is likely to fuel performance in the forthcoming periods. Additionally, the buyouts of BC and Goody's have been driving performance. Further, management expects to gain from solid consumption trend across some of its core brands. We expect such aspects to bear positive impacts in the to-be-reported quarter.

Headwinds Expected to Hurt

Prestige Brands’ Household Cleaning segment has been dismal for a while, thanks to decline in consumer usage. This has been particularly harming the Comet product line. Owing to such soft trends, the company recently inked a deal to divest the household cleaning business and focus on other areas of growth, such as healthcare.  In fact, along with first-quarter fiscal 2019 results, the company is expected to reveal the details of the divestiture and its impact on fiscal 2019 results.

As for now, we expect the segment to dent the upcoming quarterly release. Markedly, the Zacks Consensus Estimate for sales in the segment is currently pegged at $18.9 million, depicting a decline of roughly 5%. Moreover, sluggish performance of this unit is likely to mar the company’s overall top line. Incidentally, the Zacks Consensus Estimate for total revenues is pegged at $253 million, reflecting a fall of almost 1.5% year over year.  
 
Apart from these segmental headwinds, high cost of sales has also been a threat to Prestige Brands’ performance. Well, the company witnessed year-over-year rise in cost sales of 3.8%, 33.3% 28.5%, 25.1% during the fourth, third, second and first quarters of fiscal 2018, respectively. Persistence of this trend in the future may pose a threat to the company’s gross margins. All said, the consensus mark for earnings is currently pegged at 66 cents, which falls in-line with the prior year quarters’ bottom-line.

Prestige Brand Holdings, Inc. Price, Consensus and EPS Surprise

 

Let’s now take a look at the Zacks Model for the upcoming quarterly release.

What the Zacks Model Unveils

Our proven model doesn’t show that Prestige Brands is likely to beat estimates in the upcoming quarterly release. For this, a stock needs to have a positive Earnings ESP and a Zacks Rank #1 (Strong Buy), 2 (Buy) or 3 (Hold). You can uncover the best stocks to buy or sell before they’re reported with our Earnings ESP Filter.

Although Prestige Brands has an Earnings ESP of +0.13%, its Zacks Rank #4 (Sell) makes us less confident regarding an earnings beat.

Stocks Poised to Beat 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:

Callaway Golf Company has an Earnings ESP of +0.94% and a Zacks Rank of 2. You can see the complete list of today’s Zacks #1 Rank stocks here.

NIKE, Inc (NKE - Free Report) , a Zacks #3 Ranked stock, has an Earnings ESP of +9.99%.

PVH Corp (PVH - Free Report) , also a Zacks #3 Ranked stock, has an Earnings ESP of +0.08%.

Wall Street’s Next Amazon

Zacks EVP Kevin Matras believes this familiar stock has only just begun its climb to become one of the greatest investments of all time. It’s a once-in-a-generation opportunity to invest in pure genius.

Click for details >>


Unique Zacks Analysis of Your Chosen Ticker


Pick one free report - opportunity may be withdrawn at any time


NIKE, Inc. (NKE) - $25 value - yours FREE >>

PVH Corp. (PVH) - $25 value - yours FREE >>

Prestige Consumer Healthcare Inc. (PBH) - $25 value - yours FREE >>

Published in