America's Car-Mart (CRMT) Q3 Earnings Report Preview: What To Look For

Used-car retailer America’s Car-Mart (NASDAQ:CRMT) will be reporting earnings this Thursday before market open. Here’s what to look for.

America's Car-Mart missed analysts’ revenue expectations by 5.5% last quarter, reporting revenues of $339.6 million, down 2% year on year. It was a disappointing quarter for the company, with a significant miss of analysts’ revenue estimates and a significant miss of analysts’ EBITDA estimates.

Is America's Car-Mart a buy or sell going into earnings? Read our full analysis here, it’s free for active Edge members.

This quarter, analysts are expecting America's Car-Mart’s revenue to decline 4.3% year on year to $331 million, in line with the 4.3% decrease it recorded in the same quarter last year. Adjusted loss is expected to come in at -$0.28 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. America's Car-Mart has only missed Wall Street’s revenue estimates once since going public and has exceeded top-line expectations by -5.5% on average.

Looking at America's Car-Mart’s peers in the automotive and marine retail segment, some have already reported their Q3 results, giving us a hint as to what we can expect. Camping World delivered year-on-year revenue growth of 4.7%, beating analysts’ expectations by 3.9%, and Lithia reported revenues up 4.9%, topping estimates by 2.6%. Camping World traded down 24.8% following the results while Lithia was up 4.1%.

Read our full analysis of Camping World’s results here and Lithia’s results here.

There has been positive sentiment among investors in the automotive and marine retail segment, with share prices up 5.2% on average over the last month. America's Car-Mart’s stock price was unchanged during the same time and is heading into earnings with an average analyst price target of $39.50 (compared to the current share price of $21.94).

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