Wintrust Earnings Preview

Wintrust (Nasdaq: WTFC  ) hasn't been able to establish an earnings trend, bouncing between beating and falling short of estimates during the past fiscal year. The company will unveil its latest earnings on Wednesday, July 20. Wintrust is a holding company that provides traditional community banking services, wealth-management services, commercial insurance premium financing, short-term accounts receivable financing, and certain administrative services.

What analysts say:

• Buy, sell, or hold?: Analysts strongly back Wintrust, with six of 11 rating it a buy and the remainder rating it a hold. Analysts like Wintrust better than competitor MB Financial overall. Analysts still rate the stock a hold, but they are a bit more wary about it compared with three months ago.
• Revenue forecasts: On average, analysts predict $145.3 million in revenue this quarter. That would represent a decline of 6.1% from the year-ago quarter.
• Wall Street earnings expectations: The average analyst estimate is earnings of $0.29 per share. Estimates range from $0.25 to $0.35.

What our community says:
CAPS All-Stars are split on WTFC, with 52.4% rating it an "outperform" and 47.6% giving it an "underperform" rating. Fools are keen on Wintrust, though the message boards have been quiet lately, with only 18 posts in the past 30 days. Wintrust's bearish CAPS rating of one out of five stars falls short of the Fool community's sentiment.

Management:
Wintrust's profit has risen year over year by an average of 3.6%. A year-over-year revenue increase last quarter snaps a streak of two consecutive quarters of revenue declines. Revenue rose 1.9% in the first quarter and fell 10.6% in the fourth quarter of the last fiscal year and 30.9% in the third quarter of the last fiscal year.

Now let's look at how efficient management is at running the business. Traditionally, margins represent the efficiency with which companies capture portions of sales dollars. The following table shows net margins over the past four quarters. 

Quarter	Q1	Q4	Q3	Q2
Net Margin	8.7%	7.2%	9.9%	6.5%

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