Owens & Minor Earnings Preview

Investors braced for a bumpy ride ahead of Owens & Minor's (NYSE: OMI  ) earnings announcement as the company has wavered between beating and falling short of analyst predictions during the past fiscal year. The company will unveil its latest earnings on Monday. Owens & Minor is a distributor of medical and surgical supplies to the acute-care market and a health care supply-chain management company.

What analysts say

• Buy, sell, or hold?: Analysts think investors should stand pat on Owens & Minor with eight of 10 analysts rating it hold. Analysts don't like Owens & Minor as much as competitor Lincare Holdings overall. Four out of nine analysts rate Lincare Holdings a buy compared to one of 10 for Owens & Minor. Owens & Minor's rating hasn't changed over the past three months.
• Revenue forecasts: On average, analysts predict $2.11 billion in revenue this quarter. That would represent a rise of 4.5% from the year-ago quarter.
• Wall Street earnings expectations: The average analyst estimate is earnings of $0.49 per share. Estimates range from $0.48 to $0.52.

What our community says
CAPS All-Stars are solidly backing the stock with 92.5% granting it an outperform rating. The community at large concurs with the All-Stars with 93.6% assigning it a rating of outperform. Fools are bullish on Owens & Minor, though the message boards have been quiet lately with only 37 posts in the past 30 days. Owens & Minor has a bullish CAPS rating of five out of five stars that is about on par with the Fool community assessment.

Management:
Owens & Minor's income has fallen year over year by an average of 3.5%. 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	9.9%	11.0%	9.6%	9.5%
Operating Margin	2.4%	1.9%	2.7%	2.6%
Net Margin	1.4%	1.1%	1.5%	1.5%

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