CommVault Systems Earnings Preview

Investors braced for a bumpy ride ahead of CommVault Systems' (Nasdaq: CVLT  ) earnings announcement as the company has wavered between beating and falling short of analyst predictions during the past fiscal year. The company will unveil its latest earnings Tuesday. CommVault Systems is a provider of data and information management software applications and related services. It develops, markets, and sells a unified suite of data and information management software applications under the Simpana brand.

What analysts say:

• Buy, sell, or hold?: Analysts generally think investors should hang on to CommVault Systems, with half rating the stock a hold. Analysts like CommVault Systems better than competitor FalconStor Software overall. One out of three analysts rate FalconStor Software a buy compared with six of 14 for CommVault Systems. While analysts still rate the stock a hold, they are a little more optimistic about it compared with three months ago.
• Revenue forecasts: On average, analysts predict $83.7 million in revenue this quarter. That would represent a rise of 26.2% from the year-ago quarter.
• Wall Street earnings expectations: The average analyst estimate is earnings of $0.10 per share. Estimates range from $0.07 to $0.12.

What our community says:
CAPS All-Stars are solidly behind the stock with 94% granting it an "outperform" rating. The community at large agrees with the All-Stars with 92.7% awarding it a rating of "outperform." Fools have embraced CommVault Systems, though the message boards have been quiet lately with only 95 posts in the past 30 days. CommVault Systems' bearish CAPS rating of two out of five stars falls short of the Fool community sentiment.

Management:
CommVault Systems' profit has risen year over year by an average of 18.8%.

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	Q4	Q3	Q2	Q1
Gross Margin	86.8%	87.9%	87.3%	85.6%
Operating Margin	13.8%	12.5%	12.3%	5.5%
Net Margin	5.4%	8.7%	7.2%	5.3%

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