Benzinga | Oct 12, 2020 10:40AM EDT

Fastenal Earnings Preview

Fastenal (NASDAQ: FAST) releases its next round of earnings this Tuesday, October 13. Here is Benzinga's essential guide to Fastenal's Q3 earnings report.

Earnings and Revenue

Fastenal EPS is expected to be around $0.38, according to sell-side analysts. Sales will likely be near $1.42 billion. Fastenal reported a per-share profit of $0.37 when it published results during the same quarter last year. Sales in that period totaled $1.38 billion. If the company were to post earnings in line with the consensus estimate when it reports Tuesday, EPS would be up 2.7%. Revenue would be up 2.97% from the year-ago period. Here is how the company's reported EPS has stacked up against analyst estimates in the past:

Quarter Q2 2020 Q1 2020 Q4 2020 Q3 2019EPS Estimate 0.36 0.34 0.31 0.36EPS Actual 0.42 0.35 0.31 0.37Revenue Estimate 1.47 B 1.36 B 1.29 B 1.37 BRevenue Actual 1.51 B 1.37 B 1.28 B 1.38 B

Stock Performance

Shares of Fastenal were trading at $46.63 as of October 09.Over the last 52-week period, shares are up 32.54%. Given that these returns are generally positive, long-term shareholders are probably content going into this earnings release.

Analysts seem to have developed a bearish outlook on the upcoming earnings release in recent days versus 90 days ago. The general EPS consensus estimate since that time has moved down 5.56% while revenue estimates have moved down 2.97%.

Do not be surprised to see the stock move on comments made during its conference call. Fastenal is scheduled to hold the call at 10:00:00 ET and can be accessed here: https://78449.themediaframe.com/dataconf/productusers/fstn/mediaframe/40573/indexl.htm