What to Expect From Dollar General Earnings

Dollar General Corp. (NYSE: DG) is scheduled to report its fiscal fourth-quarter financial results before the markets open on Thursday. The consensus estimates from Thomson Reuters calling for $1.26 in earnings per share (EPS) on $5.30 billion in revenue. In the same period of last year, the retailer posted EPS of $1.17 and $4.94 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. It announced recently that it will accelerate new store openings next year, after losing a furious bidding war for Family Dollar to rival Dollar Tree.

Dollar General currently has nearly 12,000 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.
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Ahead of the earnings report, a few analysts weighed in on Dollar General:

• Piper Jaffray reiterated an Overweight rating with a $78 price target.
• Buckingham Research initiated coverage with a Buy rating and a $94 price target.
• Morgan Stanley upgraded to an Overweight rating from Equal Weight and raised the price target to $95 from $80.
• Jefferies reiterated a Buy rating with an $81 price target.

So far in 2016, Dollar General has outperformed the broad markets, with the stock up over 3%. Over the past 52 weeks, the stock is up nearly 5%.

Shares of Dollar General were trading up 1.2% at $75.16 Wednesday afternoon, with a consensus analyst price target of $82.87 and a 52-week trading range of $59.75 to $81.42.