Lab services company Charles River Laboratories (NYSE: CRL) will be announcing earnings results this Wednesday before market open. Here’s what to look for.
Charles River Laboratories beat analysts’ revenue expectations by 4.6% last quarter, reporting revenues of $984.2 million, down 2.7% year on year. It was an exceptional quarter for the company, with an impressive beat of analysts’ organic revenue estimates and a solid beat of analysts’ full-year EPS guidance estimates.
Is Charles River Laboratories a buy or sell going into earnings? Read our full analysis here, it’s free.
This quarter, analysts are expecting Charles River Laboratories’s revenue to decline 3.8% year on year to $986.9 million, in line with the 3.2% decrease it recorded in the same quarter last year. Adjusted earnings are expected to come in at $2.50 per share.
Heading into earnings, analysts covering the company have grown increasingly bearish with revenue estimates seeing 4 downward revisions over the last 30 days (we track 11 analysts). Charles River Laboratories has only missed Wall Street’s revenue estimates once over the last two years, exceeding top-line expectations by 2.2% on average.
Looking at Charles River Laboratories’s peers in the drug development inputs & services segment, some have already reported their Q2 results, giving us a hint as to what we can expect. West Pharmaceutical Services delivered year-on-year revenue growth of 9.2%, beating analysts’ expectations by 5.6%, and Medpace reported revenues up 14.2%, topping estimates by 11.3%. West Pharmaceutical Services traded up 15.9% following the results while Medpace was also up 54.6%.
Read our full analysis of West Pharmaceutical Services’s results here and Medpace’s results here.
The outlook for 2025 remains clouded by potential trade policy changes and corporate tax discussions, which could impact business confidence and growth. While some of the drug development inputs & services stocks have shown solid performance in this choppy environment, the group has generally underperformed, with share prices down 3.3% on average over the last month. Charles River Laboratories is up 8.9% during the same time and is heading into earnings with an average analyst price target of $163.06 (compared to the current share price of $167.60).
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