What To Expect From Fortune Brands's (FBIN) Q4 Earnings

Home and security products company Fortune Brands (NYSE:FBIN) will be announcing earnings results this Thursday after the bell. Here’s what investors should know.

Fortune Brands missed analysts’ revenue expectations by 2.7% last quarter, reporting revenues of $1.15 billion, flat year on year. It was a softer quarter for the company, with a significant miss of analysts’ revenue and EPS estimates.

Is Fortune Brands a buy or sell going into earnings? Read our full analysis here, it’s free for active Edge members.

This quarter, analysts are expecting Fortune Brands’s revenue to grow 3.2% year on year to $1.14 billion, a reversal from the 4.9% decrease it recorded in the same quarter last year. Adjusted earnings are expected to come in at $1.00 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. Fortune Brands has missed Wall Street’s revenue estimates six times over the last two years.

Looking at Fortune Brands’s peers in the home construction materials segment, some have already reported their Q4 results, giving us a hint as to what we can expect. Griffon delivered year-on-year revenue growth of 2.6%, beating analysts’ expectations by 4.8%, and Simpson reported revenues up 4.2%, topping estimates by 1.6%. Griffon traded up 11.9% following the results while Simpson was also up 5%.

Read our full analysis of Griffon’s results here and Simpson’s results here.

There has been positive sentiment among investors in the home construction materials segment, with share prices up 8.6% on average over the last month. Fortune Brands is up 8.7% during the same time and is heading into earnings with an average analyst price target of $63 (compared to the current share price of $64.79).

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