Scholastic Earnings Preview

Scholastic (Nasdaq: SCHL  ) 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. Scholastic is a publisher and distributor of children's books, and a leader in educational technology and children's media.

What analysts say:

• Buy, sell, or hold?: Analysts strongly back Scholastic, with two of three rating it a buy and the remainder rating it a hold. Analysts like Scholastic better than competitor Meredith overall. Analysts' rating of Scholastic has stayed constant from three months prior.
• Revenue Forecasts: On average, analysts predict $302.2 million in revenue this quarter. That would represent a rise of 3.9% from the year-ago quarter.
• Wall Street Earnings Expectations: The average analyst estimate is a loss of $1.03 per share. Estimates range from a loss of $1.06 to a loss of $1.01.

What our community says:
CAPS All-Stars are solidly behind the stock with 75.8% assigning it an "outperform" rating. The majority of the Fools are in agreement with the All-Stars as 67% give it an "outperform" rating. Fools are bullish on Scholastic, though the message boards have been quiet lately with only 43 posts in the past 30 days. Scholastic's bearish CAPS rating of two out of five stars falls short of the Fool community sentiment.

Management:
Over the last four quarters, revenue has fallen an average of 1.3% year over year.

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	55.7%	49.1%	56.2%	49.2%
Operating Margin	9.3%	(8.1%)	19.0%	(16.1%)
Net Margin	4.5%	(6.4%)	11.1%	(12.1%)

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