United Auto Group Earnings Preview: Miss Or Not, Still A Great Company

United Auto Group (UAG) will report 4Q06 and full year 2006 earnings tomorrow. And the conference call will be at 2:00pm eastern time. I forecast the company will earn $51 million pre-tax, $32.6 million after tax, and $0.35 a share. This is growth of only ~3%. The rumor mill on Wall Street has been pretty bearish about United Auto Gorup's results. I don't like to get worked up about a quarter and you never really know how the timing of certain true ups and downs (of estimates of certain accrual expenses) work out in the fourth quarter.

But what is important is that I think United Auto Group is the best at merging people and processes among all of the publicly traded dealer groups. And I should point out that my 2006 pre-tax profit forecast of $131.7 million is considerably higher than the $128 million in pre-tax profits the company generated in 2002. Management at UAG continues to create value.

You can see more details of my forecast at the www.autoretailstocks.com website by clicking on UAG and then click on view excel file. From there you can tool around the snapshot tab, consolidated income, quarterly forecasts, and even view some of my assumptions.

The bottom line? I hope the Wall Street rumor mill is right and they do miss numbers. It should give long term investors an opportunity to build positions in a great company.

UAG 1-yr chart: