Chemours (CC) To Report Q2 Earnings: What's In The Cards?

The Chemours Company (NYSE:CC) is scheduled to release its second-quarter 2019 results after the bell on Aug 1. The company will likely face some volume pressure in its Titanium Technologies segment in the quarter.

Chemours beat the Zacks Consensus Estimate for earnings in two of the trailing four quarters while missed once and delivered in-line results on the other occasion. In this timeframe, the company delivered an average negative surprise of 3.1%.

Chemours’ shares are down around 31.5% year to date, underperforming the industry’s decline of roughly 18.8%.

Let’s see how things are shaping up for this announcement.

What do the Estimates Say?

The Zacks Consensus Estimate for revenues for the second quarter for Chemours is currently pegged at $1,530 million, reflecting an expected decline of roughly 15.8% on a year over year basis.

Revenues in the Fluoroproducts segment are projected to rise 3% year over year as the Zacks Consensus Estimate for the second quarter is pegged at $825 million.

Moreover, the Zacks Consensus Estimate for revenues for the Chemical Solutions unit for the second quarter stands at $174 million, which reflects an expected 13.7% increase from the prior-year quarter.

Revenues from the Titanium Technologies division are expected to decline 31.2% year over year as the Zacks Consensus Estimate is pegged at $593 million.

Some Factors at Play

Chemours is seeing pressure on Ti-Pure TiO2 (titanium dioxide) pigment volumes. The company witnessed lower volumes for these products in the first quarter of 2019 due to weak demand (especially in Europe) and expects the volume weakness to continue in the second quarter, albeit to a lesser extent. Lower expected volumes will likely hurt sales of the Titanium Technologies segment.

The company also saw higher costs (of around $33 million) in the first quarter due to operational headwinds in its Fluoroproducts segment, mainly resulting from unplanned outage at its Louisville facility and headwinds related to the start-up of its Corpus Christi facility. Chemours expects some impacts from the operating issues to continue into the second quarter. It expects around $20 million of impact in the quarter. This will likely affect the company’s profitability.

Nevertheless, the company should benefit from increasing adoption of Opteon refrigerants in the to-be-reported quarter. Chemours is seeing strong adoption of Opteon for mobile applications.

Zacks Model

Our proven model does not show that Chemours is likely to beat estimates this quarter. That is because a stock needs to have a positive Earnings ESP and a Zacks Rank #1 (Strong Buy), 2 (Buy) or 3 (Hold) for this to happen. That is not the case here, as you will see below:

Earnings ESP: Earnings ESP for Chemours is -8.38%. The Zacks Consensus Estimate for the second quarter is currently pegged at 90 cents. You can uncover the best stocks to buy or sell before they’re reported with our Earnings ESP Filter.

Zacks Rank: Chemours currently carries a Zacks Rank #3, which when combined with a negative ESP, makes surprise prediction difficult.

Note that we caution against Sell-rated stocks (#4 or 5) going into the earnings announcement, especially when the company is seeing negative estimate revisions.

Stocks That Warrant a Look

Here are some other companies in the basic materials space you may want to consider as our model shows they have the right combination of elements to post an earnings beat this quarter:

Arconic Inc. (NYSE:ARNC) has an Earnings ESP of +0.83% and carries a Zacks Rank #1. You can see the complete list of today’s Zacks #1 Rank stocks here.

Barrick Gold Corporation (NYSE:GOLD) has an Earnings ESP of +0.70% and carries a Zacks Rank #2.

Carpenter Technology Corporation (NYSE:CRS) has an Earnings ESP of +0.27% and carries a Zacks Rank #3.

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