Clorox Q1 Results Beat Estimates, Cuts Annual View On Adverse Currency

(RTTNews) - Clorox Co. (CLX), a manufacturer of consumer and professional products, Thursday said first-quarter net earnings improved to $136 million from $133 million. Earnings per share advanced to $1.03 from $1.01. Earnings from continuing operations totaled $1.04 per share this year.

According to the company, the latest results reflect the benefit of strong cost savings, higher volume and price increases, partially offset by an increase in manufacturing and logistics costs, higher commodity costs and unfavorable foreign currency exchange rates.

On average, 17 analysts polled by Thomson Reuters expected earnings of $1.01 per share for the quarter. Analysts' estimates typically exclude special items.

Net sales were $1.364 billion in comparison with $1.338 billion last year. Wall Street expected revenues of $1.35 billion.

Chairman and CEO Don Knauss said, "We're off to a good start in the fiscal year, delivering 2 percent sales growth. Excluding the impact of foreign currencies, sales grew 3.5 percent. We also delivered strong pretax profit growth of 7 percent."

Knauss added that like other companies, it continue to face headwinds, including foreign currency declines and increasing commodity costs. The firm is also facing heightened competitive activity, which is expected to continue through the fiscal year.

Clorox now expects fiscal 2014 earnings per share from continuing operations in the range of $4.45 to $4.60.

Clorox anticipates sales growth in the range of 2 percent to 3 percent for the year, reflecting a greater impact from unfavorable foreign currencies in Argentina and other countries, which are now expected to hurt sales by up to 2 percentage points, versus a previous assumption of 1 percentage point.

The previous forecast was for earnings per share from continuing operations in a range of $4.55 billion to $4.70 billion and sales growth in a range of 2 percent to 4 percent.

Wall Street looks for annual earnings of $4.58 on revenues of $5.76 billion.