EZCORP Earnings Preview

Watch EZCORP's (Nasdaq: EZPW  ) earnings report to see if it can beat analyst expectations for the third consecutive quarter. The company will unveil its latest earnings Thursday. EZCorp is a provider of specialty consumer financial services, operating pawn stores in the United States principally under the EZPAWN and Value Pawn brands and in Mexico under the EMPEO FCIL and EMPEE SU ORO brands.

What analysts say:

• Buy, sell, or hold?: Analysts are very bullish on this stock, unanimously backing it as a buy. Analysts like EZCORP better than competitor Cash America International overall. Six out of nine analysts rate Cash America International a buy compared with six of six for EZCORP.
• Revenue forecasts: On average, analysts predict $205.7 million in revenue this quarter. That would represent a rise of 18.5% from the year-ago quarter.
• Wall Street earnings expectations: The average analyst estimate is earnings of $0.53 per share. Estimates range from $0.50 to $0.54.

What our community says:
CAPS All-Stars are solidly backing the stock, with 98.6% assigning it an "outperform" rating. The community at large agrees with the All-Stars, with 96.6% giving it a rating of "outperform." Fools are keen on EZCORP and haven't been shy with their opinions lately, logging 214 posts in the past 30 days. Even with a robust four out of five stars, EZCORP's CAPS rating falls a little short of the community's upbeat outlook.

Management:
EZCORP's profit has risen year over year by an average of 28.1%.

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 gross, operating, and net margins over the past four quarters.

Quarter	Q2	Q1	Q4	Q3
Gross Margin	61.4%	61.3%	60.6%	60.4%
Operating Margin	21.0%	18.0%	20.2%	16.6%
Net Margin	14.9%	12.5%	14.1%	11.5%

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