Ecolab Inc. ECL founded in 1923 and headquartered in St. Paul, MN, is a leading provider of cleaning, sanitizing, food safety and infection prevention products and services.
The company serves the foodservice, food and beverage processing, healthcare, and hospitality markets both in the U.S. as well as internationally. Ecolab’s 10 operating units have been aggregated into 4 reportable segments, namely Global Industrial, Global Institutional, Global Energy and Other.
Currently, Ecolab has a Zacks Rank #3 (Hold) but that could change following its fourth-quarter 2017 earnings report which has just released. You can see the complete list of today’s Zacks #1(Strong Buy) Rank stocks here.
We have highlighted some of the key details from the just-released announcement below:
Earnings: Ecolab posted fourth quarterly adjusted earnings of $1.39 per share which came marginally below the Zacks Consensus Estimate of $1.40. However, the figure came higher than the year-ago quarterly earnings of $1.25.
Revenues: Adjusted quarterly net sales were $3.56 billion, up 7.2% from the year-ago quarter. Also, net sales came below the Zacks Consensus Estimate of $3.62 billion.
Major Factors: The Global Industrial segment reported revenues of $1.29 billion, up 6.1% from the year-ago quarter.
The Global Institutional segment reported revenues worth $1.22 billion, up 8.5% on year-over-year basis.
The Global Energy segment reported revenues of $853 million, up 10.8% from the prior-year quarter.
Other segment reported $189.7 million revenues, down from $203.6 million in the year-ago quarter.
Key Stats: For 2018, adjusted earnings per share is expected within a band of $5.25 to $5.45, up in the range of 12-16% on year-over-year basis.
Stock Price: In the last one year, Ecolab has outperformed the broader industry in terms of price. Notably, the stock has returned 6.1% compared to the industry’s loss of 1.4%. However, following the earnings release, share prices did not show any movement in the pre-market trading session.
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