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Cars.com Earnings: What To Look For From CARS

CARS Cover Image

Online new and used car marketplace Cars.com (NYSE:CARS) will be reporting results tomorrow morning. Here’s what investors should know.

Cars.com missed analysts’ revenue expectations by 2.4% last quarter, reporting revenues of $180.4 million, flat year on year. It was a softer quarter for the company, with a slight miss of analysts’ number of dealer customers estimates. It reported 19,206 active buyers, down 1.5% year on year.

Is Cars.com a buy or sell going into earnings? Read our full analysis here, it’s free.

This quarter, analysts are expecting Cars.com’s revenue to be flat year on year at $180.2 million, slowing from the 7.8% increase it recorded in the same quarter last year. Adjusted earnings are expected to come in at $0.49 per share.

Cars.com Total Revenue

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. Cars.com has missed Wall Street’s revenue estimates four times over the last two years.

Looking at Cars.com’s peers in the online marketplace segment, some have already reported their Q1 results, giving us a hint as to what we can expect. EverQuote delivered year-on-year revenue growth of 83%, beating analysts’ expectations by 5.2%, and Etsy reported flat revenue, topping estimates by 1.4%. EverQuote traded down 12.2% following the results while Etsy was also down 8%.

Read our full analysis of EverQuote’s results here and Etsy’s results here.

There has been positive sentiment among investors in the online marketplace segment, with share prices up 20.6% on average over the last month. Cars.com is up 5.7% during the same time and is heading into earnings with an average analyst price target of $17.86 (compared to the current share price of $11.42).

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