What's Coming For H&R Block?

H & R Block Inc HRB is scheduled to announce its fourth quarter financial results after the market closes on Monday and, according to Estimize, expectations point toward a year-over-year decline in earnings of at least 17 percent.

For the fourth quarter of the current year, Wall Street analysts are modeling consensus earnings of $2.65 per share on revenue of $2.328 billion.

Meanwhile, the crowd projects consensus earnings of $2.71 per share on revenue of $2.372 billion.

It is also interesting to see how sentiment has evolved over time.

As seen above, the Street’s consensus has been falling consistently since early February and now stands at its lowest. The crowd’s consensus fell 2 cents and then recovered 1 cent, settling at $2.71.

Volume Concerns

In a recent report, analysts at Oppenheimer reiterated an Outperform rating and a $36 price target on H&R Block. However, they expressed some preoccupation about volume.

"HRB's 2/28/15 YTD total volume was unappealing on slow storefront start/competitive DIY pricing & marketing/fraud dynamics/certain HRB discounting discontinued/ACA early season disruption. However, we anticipate the trend to mitigate in the back half + monetization/mix/attach revenue contribution. Relatively favorable was HRB's overall DIY performance in the early season in a dynamic competitive environment," the analysts commented.

The firm noted that a lot of back half work remains for the company to normalize volume. Therefore, they adjusted EPS estimates for FY15 and FY16 from $1.76 to $1.72 and from $2.22 to $2.20, respectively.