What's In The Cards For Stericycle's (SRCL) Q4 Earnings?

Stericycle, Inc. (NASDAQ:SRCL) is scheduled to report fourth-quarter 2019 results on Feb 27, before the opening bell.

We observe that the stock has rallied 46.9% in the past year, outperforming the industry’s growth of 22.1%.

Let’s check out the expectations in detail.

Top-Line Expectations

Macroeconomic factors of sorted office paper (SOP) pricing and foreign exchange rates and decline in Communication and Related Services business are likely to have partially offset the organic growth in the Secure Information Destruction and Regulated Waste and Compliance Services. This is expected to get reflected in Stericycle’s fourth-quarter 2019 revenues, the Zacks Consensus Estimate for which stands at $802.84 million, indicating decline of 5.9% from the year-ago reported figure.

In third-quarter 2019, total revenues of $833.1 million decreased 2.6% year over year.

Bottom-Line Expectations

SOP pricing, foreign exchange impacts, higher operating costs, higher interest expense and the absence of gains on share repurchases are likely to have weighed on Stericycle’s fourth-quarter 2019 earnings, the Zacks Consensus Estimate for which is pegged at 70 cents per share, indicating year-over-yeardecrease of 32%.

In third-quarter 2019, adjusted earnings per share were 80 cents, down 22.3% from the year-ago quarter’s reported figure.

What Our Model Says

Our proven Zacks model does not predict an earnings beat for Stericycle this season. The combination of a positive Earnings ESP and a Zacks Rank #1 (Strong Buy), 2 (Buy) or 3 (Hold) increases the odds of an earnings beat. But that’s not the case here. You can uncover the best stocks to buy or sell before they're reported with our Earnings ESP Filter.

Stericycle has an Earnings ESP of +6.39% but a Zacks Rank #4 (Sell).

Stocks to Consider

Here are a few stocks from the broader Zacks Business Services sector that investors may consider as our model shows that these have the right combination of elements to beat on earnings:

Envestnet (NYSE:ENV) has an Earnings ESP of +2.96% and a Zacks Rank #2. You can see the complete list of today’s Zacks #1 Rank stocks here.

S&P Global (NYSE:SPGI) has an Earnings ESP of +0.88% and a Zacks Rank #2.

Green Dot (NYSE:GDOT) has an Earnings ESP of +12.57% and a Zacks Rank #3.

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