Pandora Media Q4 Earnings Preview

Pandora Media Inc (NYSE: P) will report Q4 earnings after the market close Thursday. The Street expects EPS of $0.19 on revenue of $276.53 million.

Albert Fried & Co expected Pandora to post revenue of $264 million and forecasted the company “to post income from operations of $7 million and we see upside if Pandora has preference indexed Merlin content."

Overall, the firm saw Pandora as a sell and that “the easy long money was already earned by value investors.”

JP Morgan thought the company maintained a strong leadership position and expected EPS of $0.19 on revenue of $277 million. The firm rated the stock Overweight with a $34 price target.

Needham maintained a Buy rating and $41 price target. The firm expected EPS of $0.20 on revenue of $267.4 million.

"Key 4Q14 operating metrics we are looking for include listener growth metrics, average time spent trends, mobile hours, average ARPUs, and any update on content cost deliberations," according to Needham's analysts.

Barrington expected Q4 2014 "mobile RPM of $44.88 (up 24 percent YOY), active listeners of 77.3 million (up 1.4 percent YOY),listener hours of 5.4 billion (up 19 percent), U.S. radio market share of about 10 percent (up from 8.6 percdent in Q4/13), revenue of $276 million (up 38 percent), adjusted EBITDA margin of 15.9 percent (up 323 BPs), and adjusted EPS of $0.18 (up from $0.12 in Q4/13).”

Pandora should see “improving mobile monetization as advertising catches up with usage (Pandora ranks fourth in mobile ad revenue, behind Google, Facebook, and Twitter),” according to Barrington’s analysts.

Heading into its earnings report, Pandora Media traded at $18.28, down 1.30 percent.