PG&E Corp (PCG) to Report Q4 Earnings: What’s in the Cards?

PG&E Corporation PCG is set to report fourth-quarter and 2018 results on Feb 28, before the opening bell.

In the last reported quarter, the company delivered a positive earnings surprise of 0.89%. Moreover, the bottom line surpassed the Zacks Consensus Estimate in two of the trailing four quarters, the average beat being 0.66%.

Let’s see, how things are shaping up at the company prior to this announcement.

Factors at Play

During most of the fourth quarter, PG&E Corp witnessed colder-than-normal temperature in its service territory, indicating at an increase in demand for electricity. This in turn, is likely to boost the company’s quarterly revenues. In line with this, the Zacks Consensus Estimate for the top line is pegged at $4.29 billion, reflecting a 4.5% year-over-year increase.

However, wide parts of California got affected by wildfires during the fourth quarter. This is likely to weigh on the company’s quarterly earnings growth. Notably, the Zacks Consensus Estimate of 62 cents for PG&E’s quarterly earnings reflects a 1.6% drop from the year-ago quarter’s figure.

In addition, PG&E Corp has filed for bankruptcy in January 2019. No doubt, this decision was made pertaining to the company’s liabilities resulting from the 2017 and 2018 wildfires. We can expect the soon-to-be-reported results to give us further insight into this matter.

Earnings Whispers

Our proven model does not conclusively show that PG&E Corp is likely to beat estimates in the fourth quarter. This is because a stock needs to have both — a positive Earnings ESP and a favorable Zacks Rank #1 (Strong Buy), 2 (Buy) or 3 (Hold) — for this to happen. But that is not the case here as you will see below.

Earnings ESP: PG&E Corp has an Earnings ESP of 0.00%. You can uncover the best stocks to buy or sell before they’re reported with our Earnings ESP Filter.

Zacks Rank: PG&E Corp has a Zacks Rank #3, which increases the predictive power of ESP but an Earnings ESP of 0.00% makes surprise prediction difficult.

We caution against Sell-rated stocks (Zacks Rank #4 or 5) going into the earnings announcement, especially when the company is seeing negative estimate revisions.

Upcoming Utilities

Edison International EIX has a Zacks Rank #3. The company is slated to report fourth-quarter 2018 results on Feb 28. You can see the complete list of today’s Zacks #1 Rank stocks here.

PNM Resources, Inc. PNM carries a Zacks Rank #3. The company is slated to report fourth-quarter 2018 results on Feb 27.

CenterPoint Energy, Inc. CNP carries a Zacks Rank #3. The company is slated to report fourth-quarter 2018 results on Feb 28.

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