Invacare Earnings Preview

After beating estimates last quarter by $0.05, Invacare (NYSE: IVC  ) has set the standard for itself. The company will unveil its latest earnings tomorrow. Invacare designs, manufactures, and distributes a line of health-care products for the nonacute-care environment, including the home health-care, retail and extended-care markets.

What analysts say

• Buy, sell, or hold?: Analysts think investors should stand pat on Invacare with two of three analysts rating it hold. Analysts don't like Invacare as much as competitor Symmetry Medical overall. Three out of five analysts rate Symmetry Medical a buy compared to one of three for Invacare.
• Revenue forecasts: On average, analysts predict $436.6 million in revenue this quarter. That would represent a rise of 1.3% from the year-ago quarter.
• Wall Street earnings expectations: The average analyst estimate is earnings of $0.45 per share. Estimates range from $0.43 to $0.47.

What our community says
The majority of CAPS All-Stars see IVC as a good bet, with 65% awarding it an outperform rating. The majority of the Fools are in agreement with the All-Stars as 76.4% give it an outperform rating. Fools are gung-ho about Invacare, though the message boards have been quiet lately with only 34 posts in the past 30 days. Despite the majority sentiment in favor of Invacare, the stock has a middling CAPS rating of three out of five stars.

Management
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	28.7%	29.6%	30.1%	29.4%
Operating Margin	4.0%	2.8%	5.9%	1.9%
Net Margin	1.7%	1.6%	3.6%	(0.1%)

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