Clorox (CLX +2.92%) published its first-quarter fiscal 2027 results after market close on Monday.

At first glance, the company's growth rates looked enormously impressive.

A closer read of the numbers reveals its performance wasn't so sparkling.

This dynamic raises a big question, particularly for income investors of this high-yield dividend payer: is Clorox a buy, given how it did in the quarter? Looking good on paper, but...

Clorox's quarterly net sales leaped 33% higher year over year to nearly $1.91 billion.

Much of this was due to its acquisition of Gojo Industries, the maker of Purell sanitizing products.

The Gojo deal was announced in January of this year and closed in April.

As Gojo began to be included in Clorox's results in the fourth quarter of 2026, this skewed the year-over-year comparison in the most recently reported frame.

Another factor was the timing of Clorox's latest enterprise resource planning (ERP) software upgrade, implemented in the first quarter of fiscal 2026.

Cutting a long story short, this reduced sales that quarter, resulting in a low basis for year-over-year comparisons in the latest set of results.

Those two factors alone accounted for almost the entire 33% growth rate.

Clorox's attributable non-GAAP (adjusted) net income was $190 million.

That shook out to $1.55 per share, which, again, was quite the improvement over the year-ago figure ($0.85).

That "lapping" of the ERP transition and the Gojo absorption were major factors here too.

The consensus analyst estimates were $1.88 billion for net sales and $1.07 for adjusted earnings per share (EPS).

But the company's beats didn't impress investors who had done their homework, as they traded the shares down slightly in after-hours action following the earnings release.

The lapping effect Lapping's impact was apparent in the performance of three of Clorox's four reporting segments.

That applies to health and wellness' 62% surge to $918 million.

This is the unit where Gojo has been placed, and its presence contributed 39 percentage points to growth.

The remainder came from the ERP transition.

Gojo didn't have any impact on the household unit, which saw a 17% rise in net sales to $423 million.

This was "primarily" driven by....