SkyWest Earnings Preview

Watch SkyWest's (Nasdaq: SKYW  ) earnings report to see whether it can beat analyst expectations for the third consecutive quarter. The company will unveil its latest earnings on Wednesday, Aug. 3. SkyWest, through its wholly owned subsidiaries, SkyWest Airlines and Atlantic Southeast Airlines, offers scheduled passenger service.

What analysts say:

• Buy, sell, or hold?: Analysts don't like SkyWest as much as competitor US Airways Group overall. Six out of 12 analysts rate US Airways Group a buy, compared with two of six for SkyWest. 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 $966 million in revenue this quarter. That would represent a rise of 48.7% from the year-ago quarter.
• Wall Street earnings expectations: The average analyst estimate is $0.00 per share. Estimates range from a loss of $0.03 to a profit of $0.02.

What our community says:
CAPS All-Stars are solidly behind the stock, with 84.9% giving it an "outperform" rating. The community at large concurs with the All-Stars, with 81.6% assigning it a rating of "outperform." Fools are keen on SkyWest and haven't been shy with their opinions lately, logging 105 posts in the past 30 days. Despite the majority sentiment in favor of SkyWest, the stock has a middling CAPS rating of three out of five stars.

Management:
Revenue has now gone up for three straight quarters. The company raised its gross margin by 7.2 percentage points in the last quarter. Revenue rose 37% while cost of sales rose 17.2% to $369.4 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	57.3%	76%	55.3%	54.9%
Operating Margin	0%	6.5%	8.5%	7.6%
Net Margin	(1.3%)	4.7%	3.7%	2.9%

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