Watch Perry Ellis International's (Nasdaq: PERY) earnings report to see if it can beat analyst expectations for the fifth consecutive quarter. The company will unveil its latest earnings on Thursday, August 18. An apparel company in the United States, Perry Ellis designs, sources, markets and licenses products nationally and internationally at multiple price points and across all major levels of retail distribution.

What analysts say:

  • Buy, sell, or hold?: Analysts strongly back Perry Ellis International, with eight of nine rating it a buy and the remainder rating it a hold. Analysts don't like Perry Ellis International as much as competitor Oxford Industries overall. 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 $203.9 million in revenue this quarter. That would represent a rise of 26.1% from the year-ago quarter.
  • Wall Street Earnings Expectations: The average analyst estimate is earnings of 4 cents per share. Estimates range from a loss of 4 cents to a profit of 9 cents.

What our community says:
CAPS All Stars are solidly behind the stock with 76% giving it an "outperform" rating. The community at large backs the All Stars with 84% assigning it a rating of "outperform." Fools are bullish on Perry Ellis International, though the message boards have been quiet lately with only 47 posts in the past 30 days. Perry Ellis International's bearish CAPS rating of two out of five stars falls short of the Fool community sentiment.

Management:
Revenue has now gone up for three straight quarters. The company's gross margin shrank by 2.1 percentage points in the last quarter. Revenue rose 30.8% while cost of sales rose 35.1% to $191.3 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

33.6%

35.8%

35.6%

36%

Operating Margin

10.5%

6.8%

6.9%

1.2%

Net Margin

5.3%

3.7%

3.6%

-1.2%

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

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