Homebuilder Meritage Homes (NYSE: MTH) will be reporting earnings this Wednesday after market close. Here’s what investors should know.

Meritage Homes missed analysts’ revenue expectations by 3.4% last quarter, reporting revenues of $1.42 billion, down 10.8% year on year. It was a disappointing quarter for the company, with a significant miss of analysts’ revenue estimates and a significant miss of analysts’ adjusted operating income estimates.

Is Meritage Homes a buy or sell going into earnings? Read our full analysis here, it’s free for active Edge members.

This quarter, analysts are expecting Meritage Homes’s revenue to decline 8% year on year to $1.49 billion, a further deceleration from the 2.3% decrease it recorded in the same quarter last year. Adjusted earnings are expected to come in at $1.52 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. Meritage Homes has only missed Wall Street’s revenue estimates once over the last two years, exceeding top-line expectations by 4.6% on average.

Looking at Meritage Homes’s peers in the home builders segment, some have already reported their Q4 results, giving us a hint as to what we can expect. D.R. Horton’s revenues decreased 9.5% year on year, beating analysts’ expectations by 3.4%, and KB Home reported a revenue decline of 15.3%, topping estimates by 2.3%. D.R. Horton traded up 1.4% following the results while KB Home was down 8.5%.

Read our full analysis of D.R. Horton’s results here and KB Home’s results here.

There has been positive sentiment among investors in the home builders segment, with share prices up 8.7% on average over the last month. Meritage Homes is up 8% during the same time and is heading into earnings with an average analyst price target of $85 (compared to the current share price of $71.65).

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