Industrial and commercial distributor Global Industrial (NYSE:GIC) will be reporting earnings tomorrow after market hours. Here’s what to look for.

Global Industrial missed analysts’ revenue expectations by 3.1% last quarter, reporting revenues of $342.4 million, down 3.4% year on year. It was a disappointing quarter for the company, with a significant miss of analysts’ EBITDA and EPS estimates.

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

This quarter, analysts are expecting Global Industrial’s revenue to decline 4.4% year on year to $306.1 million, a reversal from the 22.9% increase it recorded in the same quarter last year. Adjusted earnings are 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. Global Industrial has missed Wall Street’s revenue estimates three times over the last two years.

Looking at Global Industrial’s peers in the maintenance and repair distributors segment, some have already reported their Q4 results, giving us a hint as to what we can expect. WESCO posted flat year-on-year revenue, beating analysts’ expectations by 1.5%, and Fastenal reported revenues up 3.7%, falling short of estimates by 1%. WESCO traded up 4.4% following the results while Fastenal was also up 1.8%.

Read our full analysis of WESCO’s results here and Fastenal’s results here.

Stocks, especially growth stocks where cash flows further in the future are more important to the story, had a good 2024. An economic soft landing (so far), the start of the Fed's rate cutting campaign, and the election of Donald Trump were positives for the market, and while some of the maintenance and repair distributors stocks have shown solid performance, the group has generally underperformed, with share prices down 5.8% on average over the last month. Global Industrial is down 4.5% during the same time and is heading into earnings with an average analyst price target of $40 (compared to the current share price of $24.25).

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