Life Time Fitness Earnings Preview

Life Time Fitness (NYSE: LTM  ) met its estimates last quarter, but investors hope it will beat them this quarter. The company will unveil its latest earnings on Thursday. Life Time Fitness and its subsidiaries are mainly engaged in designing, building, and operating sports and athletic, professional fitness, family recreation, and spa centers in a resort-like environment.

What analysts say

• Buy, sell, or hold?: Analysts think investors should stand pat on Life Time Fitness with seven of 12 analysts rating it hold. While analysts still rate the stock a hold, they are a little more optimistic about it compared to three months ago.
• Revenue forecasts: On average, analysts predict $251.3 million in revenue this quarter. That would represent a rise of 8.8% from the year-ago quarter.
• Wall Street earnings expectations: The average analyst estimate is earnings of $0.59 per share. Estimates range from $0.57 to $0.61.

What our community says
Most CAPS All-Stars are skeptical of LTM prospects, with 59.3% awarding it an underperform rating. The community is of two minds on the stock with 45.1% Fools granting it an outperform rating and 54.9% an underperform rating. Fools are bearish on Life Time Fitness and haven't been shy with their opinions lately, logging 181 posts in the past 30 days. Life Time Fitness' bearish CAPS rating of one out of five stars falls short of the Fool community sentiment.

Management
Life Time Fitness' profit has risen year over year by an average of 11.4%. Revenue has now gone up for three straight quarters.

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	Q1	Q4	Q3	Q2
Gross Margin	37.9%	39.1%	39.1%	38.5%
Operating Margin	16.7%	15.5%	19.1%	18.6%
Net Margin	8.7%	7.9%	9.8%	9.5%

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