Investors are on the edge of their collective seats, hoping that ZOLL Medical (Nasdaq: ZOLL) will top analyst expectations for the fifth consecutive quarter. The company will unveil its latest earnings tomorrow. The company develops and markets medical devices and software solutions that help advance emergency care and save lives, while increasing clinical and operational efficiencies.

What analysts say

  • Buy, sell, or hold?: Analysts strongly back ZOLL Medical, with seven of eight rating it a buy and the remainder rating it a hold. Analysts like ZOLL Medical better than competitor CONMED overall. While analysts still rate the stock a moderate buy, they are a little more optimistic about it compared to three months ago.
  • Revenue forecasts: On average, analysts predict $130 million in revenue this quarter. That would represent a rise of 16.7% from the year-ago quarter.
  • Wall Street earnings expectations: The average analyst estimate is earnings of $0.35 per share. Estimates range from $0.34 to $0.37.

What our community says
CAPS All-Stars are solidly behind the stock with 95.3% assigning it an outperform rating. The community at large agrees with the All-Stars with 94.2% giving it a rating of outperform. Fools have embraced ZOLL Medical, though the message boards have been quiet lately with only 43 posts in the past 30 days. ZOLL Medical has a bullish CAPS rating of five out of five stars that is about on par with the Fool community assessment.

Management
ZOLL Medical's profit has risen year over year by an average of more than twofold. Revenue has now gone up for three straight quarters. The company raised its gross margin by 3.4 percentage points in the last quarter. Revenue rose 14.4% while cost of sales rose 5.7% to $51.1 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

Q2

Q1

Q4

Q3

Gross Margin

58.3%

54.2%

55.2%

54.0%

Operating Margin

7.5%

4.7%

9.5%

5.8%

Net Margin

4.9%

3.4%

6.0%

5.2%

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