By Senad Karaahmetovic

After Greif reported second-quarter earnings, and sales exceeding consensus estimates, shares in Greif rose more than 4% Thursday morning.

Greif Q2 adjustedEPS was $2.41. This is an increase of $1.13 over the previous year and more than the analyst consensus at $1.71 per shares. The net sales reached $1.67 Billion, an increase of 24% YoY over the consensus estimate of $1.51 Billion.

Greif’s adjusted EBITDA was $251 million for the period. This is 42% more than the YoY figure and surpasses the consensus estimate of $209.4 millions.

Greif projects adjusted EPS of $7.45-7.75 in fiscal Year 1, while analysts expected $6.61 per Share. The FY adjusted free cashflow is estimated to be between $380 million and $440 million.

KeyBanc analyst Adam Josephson remains cautious on GEF stock despite the “big beat.”

“We expect GEF’s volume trends to continue to deteriorate in the quarters ahead as the global economy does the same, which begs the question of how much longer the Company’s substantial price/cost benefits will last. We expect positive reactions in the stock today because of the large adj. EBITDA/EPS beat and raise,” Josephson told clients in a note.

BofA Analyst George Staphos has a much positive outlook on GEF Stock. He maintained a Buy rating, and set a price target of $77.00 per shares.

“Performance in both Global Industrial Packaging (GIP) and Paper Packaging & Services (PPS) was strong and driven particularly by price/mix which contributed 35.5% and 25% to segment revenues, respectively… We remain encouraged by GEF’s progress on debt reduction ($213.5mn in F2Q) and the company’s leverage is now at 2.12x, the low end of its target range of 2-2.5x,” Staphos said in a note.