AutoZone Beats Q4 EPS Expectations, Posts $6.59B Revenue and Expands Store Footprint

AZO reported fiscal fourth-quarter 2026 diluted earnings of $56.05 per share on September 22, up from $48.71 a year earlier and ahead of consensus. How large the beat was depends on which estimate you use: MarketBeat, citing Zacks, puts it at $2.40 against a $53.65 consensus, while Zacks' own write-up measures it against $54.54, a 2.77% beat. Revenue of about $6.59 billion rose 5.6% year over year but missed consensus by roughly $110 million, or 1.38%.

The earnings side was carried by margins rather than traffic. Operating profit climbed 10.1% to about $1.3 billion and net income reached $931.6 million, while total-company same-store sales rose only 1.5% and domestic same-store sales 1.6%. International was the bright spot, with same-store sales up 10.7%. For the full fiscal year, sales grew 7.4% to $20.3 billion and diluted EPS rose 5.3% to $152.55.

AutoZone kept expanding and buying back stock. It opened 175 stores in the quarter and ended fiscal 2026 with 8,031 locations, repurchased 223,000 shares for $697.5 million during the quarter, and authorized an additional $1.5 billion buyback. The report landed with the stock under pressure: shares opened Tuesday at $2,805.17, just above a 1-year low of $2,796.85 and well below the 1-year high of $4,332.68, and Zacks noted the stock had underperformed the S&P 500 by 30.8 percentage points year to date. Shares were up about 5.8% at $2,965.91 in late-morning trading, per SentiSense's delayed quote.

What to watch: whether domestic same-store sales can reaccelerate from the low single digits, since that is the gap between the EPS beat and the revenue miss, and whether international momentum and the store rollout keep offsetting a soft U.S. comp. MarketBeat's tally of analysts shows a consensus Moderate Buy rating with a $3,887.58 average target.