Walgreen Company ($WAG) beat earnings as we expected in a note to our clients yesterday. They reported $.73 adjusted versus consensus expectations of $.72. This wasn't such a huge surprise but they missed last quarter and this is likely a relief to investors. The stock looks up in the pre-market.
There is an earnings conference call at 8:30 AM EDT.
What's important for the conference call is we believe that, being a year-end call, they will focus investor attention on their longer term goals. These goals are for 2016 and if investors do the math on their previous long term targets, the consensus looks low for this upcoming year and further out. We believe this can cause more upside for the stock potentially in the near and longer term.
We thought there was upside this quarter because of the accelerated pace of the front-end sales which carry higher margins. Also, last quarter seemed to be hit by one-time factors which we thought would not reoccur.
We still have two more quarters of easy sales comparisons, so the pick-up in comp store sales could continue.
Our next pick is for $ISCA who reports October 3rd.
#in
Disclosure: I am long WAG.
Additional disclosure: which could change at any time.