Dollar General Corp. (NYSE: DG) is scheduled to report its fiscal third-quarter financial results before the markets open on Thursday. The consensus estimates from Thomson Reuters call for $0.87 in earnings per share (EPS) on $5.09 billion in revenue. In the same period of the previous year, the retailer posted EPS of $0.79 and $4.72 billion in revenue.
This company is one of the nation’s top discount retailers, carrying a huge inventory of items designed to appeal to a cost-conscious consumer. The company announced recently that it will accelerate new store openings next year, after losing a furious bidding war for Family Dollar to rival Dollar Tree. The discount retail giant plans to open 730 stores this year, representing a staggering 6% square footage growth, with another 875 stores to be relocated or remodeled. These aggressive expansion plans have been applauded by analysts on Wall Street.
Dollar General currently has 11,800 stores nationwide, so the planned increase it announced when it released earnings represents a huge 14% jump in the number of open stores in just two years. The company often focuses on smaller communities where a big-box store is a tougher proposition to make profitable.
Ahead of the earnings report, a few analysts weighed in on Dollar General:
- RBC Capital has an Outperform rating and lowered its price target to $82 from $88.
- BB&T upgraded it to a Buy rating from Hold with a $78 price target.
- Wolfe Research downgraded the stock to a Market Perform from Outperform.
- Piper Jaffray has an Overweight rating and lowered its price target to $75 from $82.
So far in 2015, Dollar General has underperformed the market, with the stock down 6.2% year to date. Over the past 52 weeks, the stock is relatively flat.
Shares of Dollar General were trading at $65.42 Wednesday, with a consensus analyst price target of $82.09 and a 52-week trading range of $59.75 to $81.42.
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