Savient Pharmaceuticals Earnings Preview

Investors are bracing for the worst and waiting to see if Savient Pharmaceuticals (Nasdaq: SVNT  ) will fall short of Wall Street forecasts for the consecutive quarter. The company will unveil its latest earnings Thursday. Savient Pharmaceuticals is focused on developing and marketing pharmaceutical products that target unmet medical needs in niche and broader specialty markets. It is currently developing one product: Krystexxa.

What analysts say:

• Buy, sell, or hold?: Analysts are bullish on Savient Pharmaceuticals as four analysts rate it as a buy and only two analysts rate it as a sell. Analysts don't like Savient Pharmaceuticals as much as competitor Par Pharmaceutical Companies overall.
• Wall Street Earnings Expectations: The average analyst estimate is a loss of $0.29 per share. Estimates range from a loss of $0.41 to a loss of $0.23.

What our community says:
CAPS All-Stars are solidly backing the stock with 89.1% assigning it an "outperform" rating. The community at large agrees with the All-Stars with 92.3% granting it a rating of "outperform." Fools are keen on Savient Pharmaceuticals and haven't been shy with their opinions lately, logging 214 posts in the past 30 days. Despite the majority sentiment in favor of Savient Pharmaceuticals, the stock has a middling CAPS rating of three out of five stars.

Management:
The company's gross margin shrank by 14.3 percentage points in the last quarter. Revenue rose 18% while cost of sales rose 112.2% to $416,000 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	67.8%	(74.5%)	57.4%	61.4%
Operating Margin	(1510.9%)	(1955.1%)	(1584.6%)	(1132.7%)
Net Margin	(1048.8%)	(47.0%)	(6007.3%)	(507.6%)

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

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.