Comfort Systems USA Earnings Preview

Watch Comfort Systems USA's (NYSE: FIX  ) earnings report to see if it can beat analyst expectations for the fourth consecutive quarter. The company will unveil its latest earnings Tuesday. Comfort Systems USA provides heating, ventilation, and air conditioning installation, maintenance, repair, and replacement services throughout the United States.

What analysts say:

• Buy, sell, or hold?: Analysts think investors should stand pat on Comfort Systems USA with analysts unanimously rating it hold. That rating hasn't budged in three months as analysts have remained unchanged in their opinion of the stock.
• Revenue forecasts: On average, analysts predict $300.6 million in revenue this quarter. That would represent a rise of 20.4% from the year-ago quarter.
• Wall Street earnings expectations: The average analyst estimate is earnings of $0.04 per share. Estimates range from a loss of $0.01 to a profit of $0.08.

What our community says:
CAPS All-Stars are solidly behind the stock with 97.7% assigning it an "outperform" rating. The community at large backs the All-Stars with 96.1% awarding it a rating of "outperform." Fools are bullish on Comfort Systems USA, though the message boards have been quiet lately with only 43 posts in the past 30 days. Comfort Systems USA has a bullish CAPS rating of five out of five stars that is about on par with the Fool community assessment.

Management:
Revenue has now gone up for three straight quarters. The company's gross margin shrank by 4.6 percentage points in the last quarter. Revenue rose 19.3% while cost of sales rose 25.8% to $247.8 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	12.1%	18.1%	16.4%	16.8%
Operating Margin	(3.0%)	2.3%	2.7%	1.0%
Net Margin	(1.8%)	1.8%	1.7%	0.7%

We can help you keep tabs on your companies with My Watchlist, our free, personalized service. Add Comfort Systems USA now.

Try any of our Foolish newsletter services free for 30 days. We Fools may not all hold the same opinions, but we all believe that considering a diverse range of insights makes us better investors. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.