Ball Corp (BALL) to Report Q3 Earnings: What's in the Cards?
Ball Corporation BALL is scheduled to report third-quarter 2022 results on Nov 3, before the opening bell.
Q2 Performance
In the last reported quarter, Ball Corp’s earnings declined year over year despite an improvement in revenues. While revenues beat the Zacks Consensus Estimate, earnings missed the same. BALL beat the Zacks Consensus Estimate in one of the trailing four quarters and missed thrice, the average surprise being a negative 3.11%.
Q3 Estimates
The Zacks Consensus Estimate for the third-quarter earnings per share is pegged at 76 cents, suggesting a decline of 19% from the prior-year quarter’s levels. The estimates have moved down 1% over the past 30 days. The Zacks Consensus Estimate for total sales is pegged at $3.93 billion, indicating a year-over-year improvement of 10.6%.
Ball Corporation Price, Consensus and EPS Surprise
Ball Corporation price-consensus-eps-surprise-chart | Ball Corporation Quote
Factors to Note
Ball Corp provides key aluminum packaging products and services to consumer-oriented end markets, such as food and beverages, household and healthcare. Demand for these products has been strong over the past few quarters.
The company has also been benefiting from the strong global beverage-can demand as consumers prefer cans over glass and plastic. However, significant retail pricing actions by customers to pass through inflationary costs to consumers, particularly in the United States, have thwarted demand lately. This might get reflected in the company’s third-quarter performance.
The Beverage packaging, North and Central America segment is likely to have generated sales of $1,754 million during the September-end quarter, calling for a 15% year-over-year increase. The segmental operating income is estimated at $182 million compared with the prior-year quarter’s $186 million. The segment’s results might have been impacted by the weakness in demand as mentioned above and inflated raw material and manufacturing costs.
The Zacks Consensus Estimate for the Beverage packaging, South America segment’s net sales is pegged at $554 million, suggesting growth of 20% from the year-ago period’s levels. This reflects the demand for beverage cans and the production commencement of multiple can production lines. The segment’s operating income is pegged at $77 million, suggesting a 4% increase from the prior-year quarter’s $74 million.
The Zacks Consensus Estimate for the Beverage packaging, Europe segment’s sales is at $985 million for the to-be-reported quarter, calling for an improvement of 5% from the prior-year quarter’s levels. The segment’s operating income is projected at $103 million, suggesting a decline of 18% year over year. Elevated costs might have impacted the segment’s profits during the quarter under review.
The Aerospace segment’s contracted backlog remained strong at $3 billion as of the end of the third quarter of 2022. Contracts won but not yet booked into backlog stood at $4.7 billion. Program execution remains at a high level across the business.
The segment continues to win and provide mission-critical programs and technologies to the U.S. government, defense, intelligence, reconnaissance and surveillance customers. This is likely to get reflected in the segment’s third-quarter top line.
The Zacks Consensus Estimate for the Aerospace segment's revenues is pegged at $517 million for the period in the discussion, indicating a year-over-year improvement of 4%. The segment’s operating income is projected at $46 million, suggesting in-line results with last year quarter.
High input and labor costs due to supply constraints might have impacted the company’s performance in the quarter. Higher-than-expected start-up costs stemming from capacity-expansion measures are likely to have dented margin performance.
BALL has been focused on improving its efficiency and reducing costs, which might have negated these impacts and boosted margins in the to-be-reported quarter.
What the Zacks Model Unveils
Our proven model does not conclusively predict an earnings beat for Ball Corp this time around. The combination of a positive Earnings ESP and a Zacks Rank #1 (Strong Buy), 2 (Buy) or 3 (Hold) increases the chances of an earnings beat. You can see the complete list of today's Zacks #1 Rank stocks here.
You can uncover the best stocks before they’re reported with our Earnings ESP Filter.
Earnings ESP: BALL has an Earnings ESP of +0.22%.
Zacks Rank: Currently, the company carries a Zacks Rank #4 (Sell).
Price Performance
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Shares of Ball Corp have fallen 46.6% in the past year compared with the industry's decline of 37.5%.
Stocks Poised to Beat Earnings Estimates
Here are some Industrial Products stocks, which, according to our model, have the right combination of elements to post an earnings beat in their upcoming releases:
Titan International TWI currently has an Earnings ESP of +9.28% and a Zacks Rank of 3. The Zacks Consensus Estimate for third-quarter 2022 earnings has moved down 2% over the past 60 days. The estimate suggests growth of 188% from the year-ago reported figure. TWI has a trailing four-quarter earnings surprise of 47%, on average.
The Zacks Consensus Estimate for TWI’s quarterly revenues is pegged at $593 million. The estimate projects an increase of 19.7% from the prior-year quarter’s levels. The company is scheduled to report its third-quarter results on Nov 7,
Mueller Water Products MWA, which will also report earnings for the September ended quarter on Nov 7, currently has an Earnings ESP of +17.65% and a Zacks Rank of 3. The Zacks Consensus Estimate for third-quarter 2022 earnings is currently pegged at 14 cents per share, suggesting 16.7% growth from the year-ago quarter. The estimate has gone up 8% over the past 60 days.
The Zacks Consensus Estimate for quarterly revenues is pinned at $320.7 million, suggesting growth of 8.5% from the prior-year tally. MWA has a trailing four-quarter earnings surprise of 5.17%, on average.
Vertex Energy VTNR currently has an Earnings ESP of +170% and a Zacks Rank #3. The Zacks Consensus Estimate for third-quarter 2022 earnings has gone down 70% in the past 60 days and is currently pegged at 3 cents per share. The projection indicates a turnaround performance from the year-ago loss of 4 cents per share.
The Zacks Consensus Estimate for Vertex Energy’s quarterly revenues is pegged at $943 million, which indicates a solid improvement from the year-ago reported figure of $29 million. VTNR will report third-quarter 2022 results on Nov 8.
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