Altria's Q1 Profit & Revenue Miss Expectations, Forecast In-Line

Written by StockNews.com

Altria Group Inc. (MO) early Tuesday posted worse than expected first quarter earnings results, with both profit and revenue just missing Wall Street’s view, but provided a full-year outlook that was in-line with expectations.

The Richmond, VA-based tobacco giant reported Q1:

earnings per share (EPS) of $0.73, which was $0.01 worse than the Wall Street consensus estimate of $0.74 [and]

revenues rose 1.3% from last year to $4.59 billion, also missing analysts’ view for $4.63 billion.

Looking ahead, Altria forecast:

full-year 2017 EPS of $3.26 to $3.32, which straddles analysts’ estimate of $3.29.

The company commented via press release:

“We grew first-quarter adjusted diluted earnings per share by 1.4% against a difficult comparison in the year-ago quarter when we grew adjusted diluted EPS more than 14%.

The smokeable products segment continued to generate strong results, which offset lower equity earnings from our beer investment and the effect of the voluntary product recall in the smokeless products segment.”

Altria Group Inc. shares fell $0.93 (-1.31%) in premarket trading Tuesday. Year-to-date, MO has gained 5.54%, versus a 7.24% rise in the benchmark S&P 500 index during the same period.

MO currently has a StockNews.com POWR Rating of B (Buy), and is ranked #5 of 10 stocks in the Tobacco category.