Family Dollar (FDO) Q2 earnings preview

Posted Apr 7th 2009 3:30PM by Michael Fowlkes
Filed under: Before the Bell, Earnings Reports, Forecasts, Competitive Strategy, Family Dollar Stores (FDO)

One company that has been making the best of the current economy is retailer Family Dollar (NYSE: FDO). The company has been strong over the past couple of years, and is looking to continue that trend by posting strong second quarter earnings in the morning.

Over the past six quarters, the company has been able to match or beat estimates each time. Going into tomorrow's release, Wall Street is expecting the company show earnings of $0.60 per share.

Don't be surprised to see a strong quarter for Family Dollar. Americans have been cutting back on their budgets a lot over the past few months, and many of these consumers have headed into Family Dollar to look for good ways to cut their costs. A lot of people that would have never walking into a Family Dollar lately, and so far they seem to like what they are finding in the stores.

One of the main ways to see how a company is growing is by taking a look at same store sales. This is a good measure of the increase in traffic, and Family Dollar is doing just fine, announcing earlier that same store sales increased by 6.4% in the quarter. Pretty good during the current economic environment, and it forecast that quarterly earnings would fall in the 59 to 61 cents per share range. Wall Street liked hearing that, and lifted its estimate from 50 cents per share up to 60 cents.

Shares of the company are down a little bit today, but have been red hot lately. Let's close by taking a look at just how strong this retailer has been over the past 12 months.