Welding equipment manufacturer Lincoln Electric (NASDAQ:LECO) will be announcing earnings results tomorrow before market open. Here’s what you need to know.

Lincoln Electric beat analysts’ revenue expectations by 0.5% last quarter, reporting revenues of $983.8 million, down 4.8% year on year. It was a mixed quarter for the company, with a solid beat of analysts’ adjusted operating income estimates but a significant miss of analysts’ organic revenue estimates.

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

This quarter, analysts are expecting Lincoln Electric’s revenue to decline 5.8% year on year to $996.9 million, a reversal from the 13.7% increase it recorded in the same quarter last year. Adjusted earnings are expected to come in at $2.00 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. Lincoln Electric has missed Wall Street’s revenue estimates three times over the last two years.

Looking at Lincoln Electric’s peers in the professional tools and equipment segment, some have already reported their Q4 results, giving us a hint as to what we can expect. Snap-on posted flat year-on-year revenue, meeting analysts’ expectations, and Kennametal reported a revenue decline of 2.7%, falling short of estimates by 1%. Snap-on traded down 5.2% following the results while Kennametal was also down 6.4%.

Read our full analysis of Snap-on’s results here and Kennametal’s results here.

Investors in the professional tools and equipment segment have had steady hands going into earnings, with share prices flat over the last month. Lincoln Electric is up 1.2% during the same time and is heading into earnings with an average analyst price target of $221.33 (compared to the current share price of $193.39).

Today’s young investors likely haven’t read the timeless lessons in Gorilla Game: Picking Winners In High Technology because it was written more than 20 years ago when Microsoft and Apple were first establishing their supremacy. But if we apply the same principles, then enterprise software stocks leveraging their own generative AI capabilities may well be the Gorillas of the future. So, in that spirit, we are excited to present our Special Free Report on a profitable, fast-growing enterprise software stock that is already riding the automation wave and looking to catch the generative AI next.