Industrial supplies company MSC Industrial Direct (NYSE: MSM) will be reporting results this Tuesday before market open. Here’s what investors should know.

MSC Industrial missed analysts’ revenue expectations by 0.8% last quarter, reporting revenues of $891.7 million, down 4.7% year on year. It was a mixed quarter for the company, with an impressive beat of analysts’ EBITDA estimates but a slight miss of analysts’ organic revenue estimates.

Is MSC Industrial a buy or sell going into earnings? Read our full analysis here, it’s free.

This quarter, analysts are expecting MSC Industrial’s revenue to decline 1.1% year on year to $968.5 million, improving from the 7.1% decrease it recorded in the same quarter last year. Adjusted earnings are expected to come in at $1.03 per share.

Analysts covering the company have generally reconfirmed their estimates over the last 30 days, suggesting they anticipate the business to stay the course heading into earnings. MSC Industrial has missed Wall Street’s revenue estimates four times over the last two years.

With MSC Industrial being the first among its peers to report earnings this season, we don’t have anywhere else to look to get a hint at how this quarter will unravel for industrial distributors stocks. However, there has been positive investor sentiment in the segment, with share prices up 7.2% on average over the last month. MSC Industrial is up 7.2% during the same time and is heading into earnings with an average analyst price target of $82.14 (compared to the current share price of $85.73).

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