American Science & Engineering Earnings Preview

American Science & Engineering (Nasdaq: ASEI  ) hasn't been able to establish an earnings trend, bouncing between beating and falling short of estimates during the past fiscal year. The company will unveil its latest earnings Thursday. American Science & Engineering Inc. develops, manufactures, markets, and sells X-ray inspection and other detection solutions for homeland security and other targeted markets.

What analysts say:

• Buy, sell, or hold?: Analysts generally think investors should hang onto American Science & Engineering, with half rating the stock a hold. Analysts don't like American Science & Engineering as much as competitor OSI Systems overall. Three out of three analysts rate OSI Systems a buy compared to two of four for American Science & Engineering. Analysts' rating of American Science & Engineering has stayed constant from three months prior.
• Revenue forecasts: On average, analysts predict $61.3 million in revenue this quarter. That would represent a rise of 14.2% from the year-ago quarter.
• Wall Street earnings expectations: The average analyst estimate is earnings of $1.01 per share. Estimates range from $0.90 cents to $1.08.

What our community says:
CAPS All-Stars are solidly behind the stock with 99% assigning it an "outperform" rating. The community at large concurs with the All-Stars, with 97.7% giving it a rating of "outperform." Fools are keen on American Science & Engineering and haven't been shy with their opinions lately, logging 336 posts in the past 30 days. American Science & Engineering has a bullish CAPS rating of five out of five stars that is about on par with the Fool community assessment.

Management:
American Science & Engineering's profit has risen year over year by an average of 27.5%.

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	45.6%	45.3%	49.4%	44.4%
Operating Margin	21.4%	22.7%	29.3%	16.8%
Net Margin	14.1%	15.4%	18.2%	12.7%

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