Progress Software Earnings Preview

Progress Software (Nasdaq: PRGS  ) came in under analyst's estimates last quarter, but now have a chance to fix things this quarter. The company will unveil its latest earnings on Tuesday. Progress Software is a supplier of application infrastructure software and services for the development, deployment, integration, and management of business applications.

What analysts say:

• Buy, sell, or hold?: Analysts are very bullish on this stock, unanimously backing it as a buy. That rating hasn't budged in three months as analysts have remained steadfast in their opinion of the stock.
• Revenue forecasts: On average, analysts predict $128.1 million in revenue this quarter. That would represent a decline of 0.6% from the year-ago quarter.
• Wall Street earnings expectations: The average analyst estimate is earnings of $0.24 per share.

What our community says:
The majority of CAPS All-Stars see Progress Software as a good bet, with 71.4% awarding it an outperform rating. The majority of the Fools are in agreement with the All-Stars as 79.6% give it an outperform rating. Fools are keen on Progress Software, though the message boards have been quiet lately with only 22 posts in the past 30 days. Progress Software'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.

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	Q2	Q1	Q4	Q3
Gross Margin	80.6%	82.0%	82.5%	80.8%
Operating Margin	20.2%	21.1%	22.6%	12.8%
Net Margin	13.3%	15.3%	14.7%	7.2%

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

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