Fulton Earnings Preview

After beating estimates last quarter by $0.01, Fulton (Nasdaq: FULT  ) has set the standard for itself. The company will unveil its latest earnings Tuesday. Fulton Financial is a multi-bank financial holding company that provides banking and financial services to businesses and consumers through its wholly owned banking subsidiaries.

What analysts say:

• Buy, sell, or hold?: Analysts strongly back Fulton, with eight of 12 rating it a buy and the remainder rating it a hold. Analysts like Fulton better than competitor National Penn Bancshares overall. Analysts still rate the stock a moderate buy, but they are a bit more wary about it compared with three months ago.
• Revenue Forecasts: On average, analysts predict $145.7 million in revenue this quarter. That would represent a rise of 1.1% from the year-ago quarter.
• Wall Street Earnings Expectations: The average analyst estimate is earnings of $0.19 per share. Estimates range from $0.18 to $0.20.

What our community says:
Most CAPS All-Stars are skeptical of Fulton's prospects, with 60.3% awarding it an "underperform" rating. The community is of two minds on the stock with 53.5% Fools granting it an "outperform" rating and 46.5% an "underperform" rating. Fools are bearish on Fulton, though the message boards have been quiet lately with only 50 posts in the past 30 days. Fulton's bearish CAPS rating of two out of five stars falls short of the Fool community sentiment.

Management:
Fulton's profit has risen year over year by an average of 32.1% over the past five quarters. Revenue has fallen for the past three 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 net margins over the past four quarters.

Quarter	Q2	Q1	Q4	Q3
Net Margin	16.4%	15.1%	13.5%	15.9%

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

Try any of our Foolish newsletter services free for 30 days. We Fools may not all hold the same opinions, but we all believe that considering a diverse range of insights makes us better investors. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.