Old Dominion Freight Line Earnings Preview

Watch Old Dominion Freight Line's (Nasdaq: ODFL  ) earnings report to see if it can beat analyst expectations for the fifth consecutive quarter. The company will unveil its latest earnings tomorrow. Old Dominion Freight Lines is a nonunion less-than-truckload motor carrier providing multiregional service among six regions in the United States and next-day and second-day service within each of these regions.

What analysts say

• Buy, sell, or hold?: Analysts strongly back Old Dominion Freight Line, with 12 of 18 rating it a buy and the remainder rating it a hold. Analysts like Old Dominion Freight Line better than competitor Werner Enterprises overall. Analysts haven't adjusted their rating of Old Dominion Freight Line for the past three months.
• Revenue forecasts: On average, analysts predict $469.7 million in revenue this quarter. That would represent a rise of 27.5% from the year-ago quarter.
• Wall Street earnings expectations: The average analyst estimate is earnings of $0.55 per share. Estimates range from $0.49 to $0.59.

What our community says
CAPS All-Stars are solidly behind the stock with 84.8% giving it an outperform rating. The community at large backs the All-Stars with 83.1% granting it a rating of outperform. Fools are bullish on Old Dominion Freight Line, though the message boards have been quiet lately with only 48 posts in the past 30 days. Despite the majority sentiment in favor of Old Dominion Freight Line, the stock has a middling CAPS rating of three out of five stars.

Management
Old Dominion Freight Line's profit has risen year over year by an average of more than twofold. The company's gross margin shrank by 3.2 percentage points in the last quarter. Revenue rose 33% while cost of sales rose 53.5% to $100.3 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	76.3%	78.3%	79.4%	79.3%
Operating Margin	9.0%	9.5%	11.0%	10.9%
Net Margin	5.1%	5.5%	6.2%	5.8%

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