Greenbrier Companies (GBX) Q3 Earnings Expected to Decline

Wall Street expects a year-over-year decline in earnings on lower revenues when Greenbrier Companies (GBX) reports results for the quarter ended May 2020. While this widely-known consensus outlook is important in gauging the company’s earnings picture, a powerful factor that could impact its near-term stock price is how the actual results compare to these estimates.

The stock might move higher if these key numbers top expectations in the upcoming earnings report, which is expected to be released on July 10. On the other hand, if they miss, the stock may move lower.

While management’s discussion of business conditions on the earnings call will mostly determine the sustainability of the immediate price change and future earnings expectations, it’s worth having a handicapping insight into the odds of a positive EPS surprise.

This maker of railroad freight car equipment is expected to post quarterly earnings of $0.19 per share in its upcoming report, which represents a year-over-year change of -78.7%.

Revenues are expected to be $650.30 million, down 24% from the year-ago quarter.

The consensus EPS estimate for the quarter has remained unchanged over the last 30 days. This is essentially a reflection of how the covering analysts have collectively reassessed their initial estimates over this period.

Investors should keep in mind that the direction of estimate revisions by each of the covering analysts may not always get reflected in the aggregate change.

Estimate revisions ahead of a company’s earnings release offer clues to the business conditions for the period whose results are coming out. Our proprietary surprise prediction model — the Zacks Earnings ESP (Expected Surprise Prediction) — has this insight at its core.

The Zacks Earnings ESP compares the Most Accurate Estimate to the Zacks Consensus Estimate for the quarter; the Most Accurate Estimate is a more recent version of the Zacks Consensus EPS estimate. The idea here is that analysts revising their estimates right before an earnings release have the latest information, which could potentially be more accurate than what they and others contributing to the consensus had predicted earlier.

Thus, a positive or negative Earnings ESP reading theoretically indicates the likely deviation of the actual earnings from the consensus estimate. However, the model’s predictive power is significant for positive ESP readings only.

A positive Earnings ESP is a strong predictor of an earnings beat, particularly when combined with a Zacks Rank #1 (Strong Buy), 2 (Buy) or 3 (Hold). Our research shows that stocks with this combination produce a positive…