Avista (NYSE: AVA) 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 on Thursday. Avista is an energy company engaged in the generation, transmission, and distribution of energy as well as other energy-related businesses.

What analysts say

  • Buy, sell, or hold?: Analysts think investors should stand pat on Avista with five of six analysts rating it hold. While analysts still rate the stock a hold, they are a little more optimistic about it compared to three months ago.
  • Revenue forecasts: On average, analysts predict $366.2 million in revenue this quarter. That would represent a rise of 1.5% from the year-ago quarter.
  • Wall Street earnings expectations: The average analyst estimate is earnings of $0.48 per share. Estimates range from $0.47 to $0.50.

What our community says
CAPS All-Stars are solidly backing the stock with 100% granting it an outperform rating. The community at large agrees with the All-Stars with 90.2% assigning it a rating of outperform. Fools are keen on Avista, though the message boards have been quiet lately with only 19 posts in the past 30 days. Despite the majority sentiment in favor of Avista, the stock has a middling CAPS rating of three out of five stars.

Management
Avista's profit has risen year over year by an average of 28.2%.

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 and net margins over the past four quarters.

Quarter

Q1

Q4

Q3

Q2

Gross Margin

47.9%

54.8%

44.4%

52.6%

Net Margin

8.8%

6.9%

3.4%

7.1%

One final thing: If you want to keep tabs on Avista movements, and for more analysis on the company, make sure you add it to your watchlist.

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