Global media and entertainment company iHeartMedia (NASDAQ:IHRT) will be reporting earnings tomorrow after market hours. Here’s what to look for.
iHeartMedia beat analysts’ revenue expectations by 0.7% last quarter, reporting revenues of $1.01 billion, up 5.8% year on year. It was a softer quarter for the company, with a significant miss of analysts’ EPS estimates and a miss of analysts’ adjusted operating income estimates.
Is iHeartMedia a buy or sell going into earnings? Read our full analysis here, it’s free.
This quarter, analysts are expecting iHeartMedia’s revenue to grow 9.3% year on year to $1.17 billion, a reversal from the 5.2% decrease it recorded in the same quarter last year.
Analysts covering the company have generally reconfirmed their estimates over the last 30 days, suggesting they anticipate the business to stay the course heading into earnings. iHeartMedia has only missed Wall Street’s revenue estimates once over the last two years, exceeding top-line expectations by 1.3% on average.
Looking at iHeartMedia’s peers in the consumer discretionary segment, some have already reported their Q4 results, giving us a hint as to what we can expect. FOX delivered year-on-year revenue growth of 19.9%, beating analysts’ expectations by 5%, and AMC Networks reported a revenue decline of 11.7%, falling short of estimates by 2.3%. FOX traded up 5% following the results while AMC Networks was down 15.4%.
Read our full analysis of FOX’s results here and AMC Networks’s results here.
Stocks generally had a good 2024. The Fed fought high inflation and won without sending the economy into a recession, otherwise lovingly known as a soft landing. The U.S. Central Bank is now cutting rates. That, plus the election of Donald Trump in November 2024, sent markets even higher, and while some of the consumer discretionary stocks have shown solid performance, the group has generally underperformed, with share prices down 3.4% on average over the last month. iHeartMedia is down 3.8% during the same time and is heading into earnings with an average analyst price target of $3.58 (compared to the current share price of $2.27).
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