Earnings Preview For Ball Corporation (BLL)

Ball Corporation BLL is expected to announce its Q1 earnings report on Thursday, April 28, before the markets open. Analysts are predicting earnings per share to reach $0.48, up from $0.43 a year ago. Within the last 30 days, analysts have upgraded their earnings estimates by $0.01 per share. Ball Corporation is a Colorado-based supplier of metal packaging to the beverage, food and household products industries. The company's packaging products are produced for a range of end uses and are manufactured in plants globally. It also supplies aerospace and other technologies and services to governmental and commercial customers within its aerospace and technologies segment. During the year ended December 31, 2010, its product lines included aluminum and steel beverage containers, which accounted for 73% of its total net sales and 82% of its total earnings before interest and taxes. It also produces steel food containers and steel aerosol containers for beverages and foods, as well as steel paint cans, decorative steel tins and aluminum slugs. In August 2010, the company completed the acquisition of 10.1% interest in Latapack-Ball Embalagens. In January 2011, Ball also completed the acquisition of Aerocan S.A.S. The majority of rating agencies have a Buy (or Strong buy) rating on Ball's shares. Agencies' optimism might be based on the fact that analysts are predicting Ball will outperform most of its rivals this year. Earnings per share is expected to grow by 11.6% this quarter, before gaining more strength in the rest of the year to finish the current year 21.9% higher than a year ago. The equivalent values for the industry are only 2.4% for Q1 and 14.2% for the whole year. Investors will be looking closely to see if Ball can meet such high expectations. They will be encouraged by the fact that analysts were doing a pretty good job in predicting Ball's results recently. In the last two quarters, analysts had missed Ball's earnings per share results by only $0.01.