Gulf Island Fabrication Earnings Preview

Investors never know what to expect for Gulf Island Fabrication (Nasdaq: GIFI  ) , as it has wavered between topping and missing analysts estimates during the past fiscal year. The company will unveil its latest earnings tomorrow. Gulf Island Fabrication is a fabricator of offshore drilling and production platforms and other specialized structures used in the development and production of offshore oil and gas reserves.

What analysts say

• Buy, sell, or hold?: Analysts strongly back Gulf Island Fabrication, with four of seven rating it a buy and the remainder rating it a hold. Gulf Island Fabrication's rating hasn't changed over the past three months.
• Revenue forecasts: On average, analysts predict $65.8 million in revenue this quarter. That would represent a decline of 12.6% from the year-ago quarter.
• Wall Street earnings expectations: The average analyst estimate is earnings of $0.10 per share. Estimates range from $0.01 to $0.20.

What our community says
CAPS All-Stars are solidly backing the stock with 99.2% assigning it an outperform rating. The community at large backs the All-Stars with 95.6% awarding it a rating of outperform. Fools have embraced Gulf Island Fabrication and haven't been shy with their opinions lately, logging 106 posts in the past 30 days. Gulf Island Fabrication has a bullish CAPS rating of five out of five stars that is about on par with the Fool community assessment.

Management
Revenue has fallen for the past three quarters. The company's gross margin shrank by 31.4 percentage points in the last quarter. Revenue fell 33.1% while cost of sales fell 9.6% to $55.9 million from a year earlier.

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	(20.6%)	5.0%	11.4%	8.9%
Operating Margin	(24.8%)	0.7%	8.1%	6.3%
Net Margin	(15.0%)	3.9%	5.7%	4.6%

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