United Natural Foods Earnings Preview

United Natural Foods  (Nasdaq: UNFI  ) is looking to meet the Street's expectations for the fourth consecutive quarter. The company will unveil its latest earnings on Thursday. United Natural Foods and its subsidiaries are distributors and retailers of natural, organic, and specialty products in the United States.

What analysts say:

• Buy, sell, or hold?: Analysts think investors should stand pat on United Natural Foods with nine of 15 analysts rating it hold. Analysts like United Natural Foods better than competitor SUPERVALU overall. Zero out of 12 analysts rate SUPERVALU a buy compared to five of 15 for United Natural Foods. 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 $1.15 billion in revenue this quarter. That would represent a rise of 16.3% from the year-ago quarter.
• Wall Street earnings expectations: The average analyst estimate is earnings of $0.43 per share. Estimates range from $0.42 to $0.44.

What our community says:
CAPS All-Stars are solidly behind the stock with 93.6% granting it an outperform rating. The community at large backs the All-Stars with 87.2% assigning it a rating of outperform. Fools are keen on United Natural Foods and haven't been shy with their opinions lately, logging 137 posts in the past 30 days. Though still bullish, the CAPS rating of four out of five stars for United Natural Foods is a bit more pessimistic than the community assessment.

Management:
United Natural Foods' profit has risen year over year by an average of 16.3% over the past five quarters.

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.

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