Cars.com (CARS) Q1 Earnings: What To Expect

Online new and used car marketplace Cars.com (NYSE:CARS) will be reporting earnings tomorrow before market hours. Here's what investors should know.

Cars.com met analysts' revenue expectations last quarter, reporting revenues of $179.6 million, up 6.8% year on year. It was a mixed quarter for the company, with in-line revenue guidance for the next quarter but slow revenue growth. It reported 19,504 active buyers, flat 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 grow 7.4% year on year to $179.4 million, improving from the 5.6% increase it recorded in the same quarter last year. Adjusted earnings are expected to come in at $0.49 per share.

The majority of analysts covering the company have 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 twice 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. MercadoLibre delivered year-on-year revenue growth of 36%, beating analysts' expectations by 12.1%, and Shutterstock reported flat revenue, topping estimates by 2.8%. MercadoLibre traded up 8.2% following the results while Shutterstock was down 7.5%.

Read our full analysis of MercadoLibre's results here and Shutterstock's results here.

Investors in the online marketplace segment have had fairly steady hands going into earnings, with share prices down 1.1% on average over the last month. Cars.com's stock price was unchanged during the same time and is heading into earnings with an average analyst price target of $24.1 (compared to the current share price of $17.24).

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