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Altria's (MO) Q4 Earnings Beat, Sales Miss; Gives FY17 View

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Altria Group Inc. (MO - Free Report) is one of the leading manufacturers of cigarettes and smokeless tobacco products in the U.S.

Altria has seen soft volume trends for the past few quarters, due to a general shift away from tobacco products amid accelerating prices of cigarettes and worldwide anti-tobacco campaigns. The company is thus putting greater focus on the growing electronic cigarettes to boost sales.

The company’s subsidiary, Nu Mark, launched Mark Ten e-cigarettes which are well accepted by consumers. Altria has been expanding its Mark e-cigarettes nationwide after its successful launch in Aug 2014, in order to boost its sales.

Altria Group Price and EPS Surprise

Altria Group Price and EPS Surprise | Altria Group Quote

Investors should also note that MO has witnessed no estimate revisions during the past 30 days. Further MO has a mixed history when it comes to recent earnings reports as the company posted positive surprises in three of the last four quarters and negative surprise for the remaining quarter with an average positive surprise of 1.72%.

Currently, MO has a Zacks Rank #3 (Hold), but that could change following Altria’s earnings report which was just released. We have highlighted some of the key stats from this just-revealed announcement below. You can see the complete list of today’s Zacks #1 Rank stocks here.

Earnings: MO beats on earnings. Our consensus earnings estimate called for EPS of 67 cents per share, and the company reported earnings per share of 68 cents per share. Investors should note that these figures take out stock option expenses.

Revenues: MO reported net revenues of $4.7 billion. This missed our consensus estimate of $4.86 billion.

Key Stats/Dev to Note: Shipment volume of Smokeable products slipped 4.7% to 29.41 million units.

Altria issued2017 full-year adjusted diluted EPS to be in a range of $3.26 to $3.32, up 7.5% to 9.5% from $3.03 in 2016.

Stock Price: Inactive in pre-market trading

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