Dollar General Corporation (DG) shares are down 2% to $70.02 in pre-market session Thursday after the company reported its fourth quarter earnings results.
The discount retailer reported earnings of $1.17 per share on revenues of $4.94 billion, up 9.9% from a year ago. Analysts were expecting EPS of $1.17 on revenues of $4.95 billion.
For fiscal 2014, the company reported EPS of $3.49 vs. adjusted fiscal/14 EPS of $3.50.
For full-year 2015, Dollar General said it expects sales to grow 8% to 9%, same-store sales to grow 3% to 3.5%.
“Given our strong return profile for new stores, we plan to accelerate our new store openings to approximately 7 percent square footage growth in 2016,” Chief Executive Rick Dreiling said in a statement. Dollar General is planning to open about 730 new stores in 2015.
For FY/15, DG, which lost a bidding battle for rival Family Dollar (FDO) in January, provided EPS guidance of $3.85-$3.95 versus consensus of $3.99 per share. The company also issued revenue projection of $20.42-$20.61 billion, compared to the consensus revenue estimate of $20.54 billion.
On valuation measures, Dollar General Corp. shares, which currently have an average 3-month trading volume of 3.87 million shares, trade at a trailing-12 P/E of 21.38, a forward P/E of 17.91 and a P/E to growth ratio of 1.53. The median Wall Street price target on the name is $78.50 with a high target of $85.00. Currently ticker boasts 17 ‘Buy’ endorsements, compared to 10 ’Holds’ and no ‘Sell’.
Profitability-wise, DG has a t-12 profit and operating margin of 5.59% and 9.43%, respectively. The $21.68 billion market cap company reported $579 million in cash vs. $2.63 billion in debt in its most recent quarter.
DG currently prints a one year return of 20.29% and a year-to-date return of 1.06%.
Dollar General Corp. provides merchandise products in the United States. The company was founded in 1939 and is based in Goodlettsville, Tennessee.
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