Lab services company Charles River Laboratories (NYSE:CRL) will be reporting earnings tomorrow before the bell. Here’s what investors should know.

Charles River Laboratories beat analysts’ revenue expectations by 3.6% last quarter, reporting revenues of $1.01 billion, down 1.6% year on year. It was a very strong quarter for the company, with an impressive beat of analysts’ organic revenue estimates and a decent beat of analysts’ full-year EPS guidance estimates.

Is Charles River Laboratories a buy or sell going into earnings? Read our full analysis here, it’s free.

This quarter, analysts are expecting Charles River Laboratories’s revenue to decline 3.3% year on year to $979.9 million, improving from the 7.9% decrease it recorded in the same quarter last year. Adjusted earnings are expected to come in at $2.53 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. Charles River Laboratories has only missed Wall Street’s revenue estimates once over the last two years, exceeding top-line expectations by 2.7% on average.

Looking at Charles River Laboratories’s peers in the drug development inputs & services segment, some have already reported their Q4 results, giving us a hint as to what we can expect. Azenta delivered year-on-year revenue growth of 4.1%, beating analysts’ expectations by 1.1%, and IQVIA reported revenues up 2.3%, topping estimates by 0.6%. Azenta traded up 4% following the results while IQVIA was also up 1.5%.

Read our full analysis of Azenta’s results here and IQVIA’s results here.

Stocks generally had a good 2024. The Fed fought high inflation and won without sending the economy into a recession, otherwise lovingly known as a soft landing. The US Central Band is now cutting rates. That, plus the election of Donald Trump in November 2024, sent markets even higher, and while some of the drug development inputs & services stocks have shown solid performance, the group has generally underperformed, with share prices down 2.3% on average over the last month. Charles River Laboratories is down 10% during the same time and is heading into earnings with an average analyst price target of $193.34 (compared to the current share price of $151.10).

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