For the second time ever, unmanned aerial vehicle maker AeroVironment (NASDAQ:AVAV) reports earnings as a public company tomorrow. Will the news make the stock soar, or crash and burn?

What analysts say:

  • Buy, sell, or waffle? Six analysts now have AeroVironment on their radar -- two more than last quarter. The stock now has two buy ratings and four holds.
  • Revenues and earnings. So far, none of the analysts has published a sales estimate. Somehow, they've nonetheless agreed the firm will likely earn about $0.26 per share.

What management says:
As a general rule, CEOs given the chance to boast of 30% sales growth and a doubling of profits ... do just that. They boast. But not at Nasdaq newcomer and mini-UAV maker AeroVironment. There, CEO Tim Conver simply described these results as "successful execution of our plans."

What management does:
Just how successful was AeroVironment? Read our report on last quarter's news, and then the table below, and judge for yourself. As new as it is to the concept of reporting its numbers publicly, we still lack sufficient data to make meaningful long-term comparisons of rolling numbers. Instead, I'll just give you the numbers for how it's done in each of the last six quarters:

Margins

10/05

1/06

4/06

7/06

10/06

1/07

Gross

41.3%

43.8%

42.3%

38.0%

39.3%

42.4%

Operating

19.7%

17.6%

11.5%

6.4%

17.4%

28.5%

Net

14.1%

12.4%

5.8%

4.3%

10.8%

19.2%
All data courtesy of Capital IQ, a division of Standard & Poor's. Data reflects quarterly performance for the quarters ended in the named months -- NOT trailing-12-month data.

One Fool says:
The little data we have collected so far suggests that gross margin is already inching downward at AeroVironment. (Compare the October 2006 and January 2007 quarters to their prior-year counterparts.) The more jagged moves in year-over-year operating and net margins tell us less, because as I mentioned in last quarter's Foolish Forecast: "Operating costs, and operating margins, include the cost of paying lawyers and accountants to get a company ready for its IPO. As a result, the quarters leading up to a firm's going public often show a bit of weakness as the 'professional services' bills come due."

Management has given us some assistance in tracking the trend, however. It guided investors to expect 20% to 25% sales growth this year, and operating margin of 15% or 16%. For comparison, that margin would be about on par with the last 12 months' results, a bit higher than AeroVironment achieved in fiscal 2006 -- and miles better than the single-digit operating margins regularly posted by rivals like Boeing (NYSE:BA), Lockheed Martin (NYSE:LMT), L-3 (NYSE:LLL), and Northrop Grumman (NYSE:NOC).

Learn more about AeroVironment in:

Fool contributor Rich Smith does not own shares of any company named above.