AutoZone Q4 2026 earnings: profit beats estimates, revenue falls short

September 22, 2026

AutoZone's Q4 2026 profit topped estimates, boosted by tariff refunds and lower inventory charges, but revenue fell short as domestic sales growth stayed modest.

Key takeaways

• Profit per share of $56.05 beat Wall Street’s estimate of roughly $54.40, but revenue of $6.59 billion came in below the $6.77 billion analysts expected — a rare case of AutoZone topping on profit while missing on sales.
• A big chunk of the profit beat came from one-time items: AutoZone received $96 million in tariff-related refunds (worth about $4.43 of the quarter’s EPS) and recorded a much smaller inventory-accounting charge (known as LIFO) than a year ago, which together flattered the bottom line.
• Total comparable-store sales (sales at outlets open at least a year, a core measure of underlying demand) rose 1.5%. Domestic stores grew a modest 1.6%, while international stores — mainly in Mexico and Brazil — grew much faster at 10.7%, aided partly by a stronger Mexican peso.
• Sales to repair shops and other professional customers (AutoZone’s ‘commercial’ business) remain the company’s strongest growth engine, up nearly 11% for the full year, helped by newer ‘Mega Hub’ warehouses that let stores stock and deliver a wider range of parts faster.
• For the full fiscal year, AutoZone posted record revenue of $20.3 billion and earnings of $152.55 per share, while opening 374 net new stores worldwide — the most in company history — including passing 1,000 stores in Mexico.
• The company’s return on equity is unusually high (roughly 249% over the past year), which reflects years of aggressive share buybacks shrinking AutoZone’s equity base rather than a change in the underlying business — a long-standing feature of its financial structure.
• For fiscal 2027, management guided to same-store sales ranging from flat to low-single-digit growth and gross margins roughly flat to slightly higher, while planning to open about 400 new stores — with growth in the U.S. and Mexico accelerating and expansion in Brazil deliberately slowing.
• CEO Phil Daniele said the company expects sales growth to pick up in all three of its markets — the U.S., Mexico and Brazil — in fiscal 2027, citing improving sales trends as the just-completed quarter progressed.

Q4 2026 in context

Figures for the quarter ended Aug 2026 and the quarter ended Aug 2025, as reported to the SEC. Fourth-quarter flows are derived as the fiscal year minus its first three quarters.

How the stock took it

Autozone Inc closed at $2803.25 on Sep 21, 2026, the last session before the report, and at $2843.34 on Sep 23, 2026, the first session after it — +1.4% across the report.

Closes from the market's daily record. Each figure spans the report date — from the last session that closed before it to the first that closed after — because a company may report before the open or after the close.

Fundamentals

Financial history →

Sources: company report · earnings call · publication