AutoZone (NYSE:AZO) Near-term Results Uncertain

With the Christmas season upon us, the auto parts industry has historically slowed down because of consumers focusing in on buying gifts. AutoZone (NYSE:AZO) and others will soon find out if that will again be the practice this year, as consumers holding on to their money could have created a demand during the cold season for car parts and maintenance.

Barclays (NYSE:BCS) said, "We will be paying close attention to any indication regarding trends over the past few weeks. During the last couple of years, the auto parts industry has seen a slowdown around the holidays as consumers allocate more of their spending dollars towards giftable items. We think the key to the near-term performance for the auto part stocks will be whether or not this deceleration has occurred this year.

"Given AZO's premium valuation (trading at 10x our CY'10 EBITDA estimate), we think the shares offer a balanced near-term risk/reward. We are raising our price target to $250, which equates to 14X our CY'11 EPS estimate of $18.11 (vs. our old $230 target, which equated to 13X our CY'11 EPS estimate of $17.67)."

Barclays reiterates their "Equalweight" on AutoZone, which closed Monday at $261.91, dropping $3.29, or 1.34 percent. They have a price target of $250 on them, up from the $230 they had before, implying they think the quarter will be slower.