Investors braced for a bumpy ride ahead of Seacor Holdings' (NYSE: CKH) earnings announcement as the company has wavered between beating and falling short of analyst predictions during the past fiscal year. The company will unveil its latest earnings on Oct. 19. Seacor Holdings is in the business of owning, operating, investing in, and marketing equipment, mainly in the offshore oil and gas and marine transportation industries.

What analysts say:
 

  • Buy, sell, or hold?: Analysts don't like Seacor Holdings as much as competitor GulfMark Offshore overall. Four out of five analysts rate GulfMark Offshore a buy compared to zero of one for Seacor Holdings. Analysts haven't adjusted their rating of Seacor Holdings for the past three months.
  • Revenue forecasts: On average, analysts predict $511.3 million in revenue this quarter. That would represent a decline of 47.8% from the year-ago quarter.
  • Wall Street earnings expectations: The average analyst estimate is earnings of $1.12 per share.

What our community says:
CAPS All-Stars are solidly backing the stock with 90.3% granting it an outperform rating. The community at large agrees with the All-Stars with 95.6% giving it a rating of outperform. Fools are gung-ho about Seacor Holdings, though the message boards have been quiet lately with only 23 posts in the past 30 days. Despite the majority sentiment in favor of Seacor Holdings, the stock has a middling CAPS rating of three out of five stars.

Management:
Seacor Holdings' profit has risen year over year by an average of more than twofold over the past five quarters. A year-over-year revenue decrease last quarter snaps a streak of three consecutive quarters of revenue increases. The company's gross margin shrank by 10.1 percentage points in the last quarter. Revenue fell 22.8% while cost of sales fell 11.6% to $428.7 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

Q2

Q1

Q4

Q3

Gross Margin

20.1%

21.4%

22.5%

30.3%

Operating Margin

3.9%

3.1%

6.3%

20.9%

Net Margin

1.7%

2.4%

4.7%

15.3%

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