(Reuters) – Ball Corp, which makes aluminum beverage cans, beat Wall Road estimates for fourth-quarter revenue on Tuesday as its cost-cutting measures helped counter weak demand.
A rising variety of its shoppers resembling Corona beer maker Constellation Manufacturers flagging weak shopper spending has pressured Ball Corp to cut back working bills.
It has additionally slimmed its operations by closing some manufacturing services and even bought its aerospace enterprise final 12 months to deal with its core enterprise.
That enterprise, of creating aluminum cans, has additionally gotten some profit from a number of firms transferring away from plastic packaging. This has helped quantity, significantly within the EMEA area, the place gross sales grew 11% within the quarter.
Nonetheless, weak U.S. gross sales pulled down total gross sales by 0.8% to $2.88 billion, which missed analysts common estimate of $2.91 billion, in response to estimates compiled by LSEG.
However that was countered by a 0.7% drop in price of gross sales, Ball Corp’s greatest expense, to $2.29 billion.
That helped the corporate’s comparable earnings of 84 cents per share beat analysts estimates of 80 cents per share.
The corporate, which has referred to as itself “the poster little one for tariffs” throughout Donald Trump’s final presidency and subsequently stopped sourcing aluminum from China, additionally forecast full-year revenue progress of over 10%, versus market expectations of 12.5%.
Analysts have mentioned that potential tariffs might result in a spike in inflation, main to a different stretch of weak spending from prospects.
(Reporting by Aamir Sohail in Bengaluru; Enhancing by Shreya Biswas and Savio D’Souza)
