Cabot Earnings Preview

Cabot (NYSE: CBT  ) beat estimates by $0.08 last quarter and investors are hoping it can beat them again. The company will unveil its latest earnings on Tuesday. Cabot is a global specialty chemicals and performance materials company that operates in four business segments: the core segment, the performance segment, the new business segment, and the specialty fluids segment.

What analysts say

• Buy, sell, or hold?: Analysts generally think investors should hang on to Cabot, with half rating the stock a hold. Analysts like Cabot better than competitor TCF overall. Six out of 17 analysts rate TCF a buy compared to three of six for Cabot. Wall Street has warmed to the stock over the past three months, with analysts increasing their endorsement from hold to moderate buy.
• Revenue forecasts: On average, analysts predict $779.7 million in revenue this quarter. That would represent a rise of 3.5% from the year-ago quarter.
• Wall Street earnings expectations: The average analyst estimate is earnings of $0.89 per share. Estimates range from $0.81 to $0.95.

What our community says
CAPS All-Stars are solidly behind the stock with 88.5% awarding it an outperform rating. The community at large agrees with the All-Stars with 92.5% granting it a rating of outperform. Fools are keen on Cabot, though the message boards have been quiet lately with only 29 posts in the past 30 days. Even with a robust four out of five stars, Cabot's CAPS rating falls a little short of the community's upbeat outlook.

Management
Cabot's income has fallen year over year by an average of more than twofold.

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	20.4%	21.0%	17.9%	20.5%
Operating Margin	9.9%	10.2%	8.0%	10.2%
Net Margin	6.4%	10.0%	4.7%	6.2%

One final thing: If you want to keep tabs on Cabot movements, and for more analysis on the company, make sure you add it to your watchlist.

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