ATMI Earnings Preview

Investors hope ATMI (Nasdaq: ATMI  ) will top analyst estimates once again after beating predictions by $0.01 in the previous quarter. The company will unveil its latest earnings on Wednesday. ATMI is a supplier of materials, materials packaging, and materials delivery systems used worldwide in the manufacture of microelectronic devices.

What analysts say:

• Buy, sell, or hold?: Half of analysts think investors should stand pat on ATMI while the remaining half are split between buy and sell. Analysts don't like ATMI as much as competitor Advanced Energy Industries overall. Three out of eight analysts rate Advanced Energy Industries a buy compared to one of four for ATMI. Analysts still rate the stock a hold, but they are a bit more wary about it compared to three months ago.
• Revenue forecasts: On average, analysts predict $98 million in revenue this quarter. That would represent a rise of 3.2% from the year-ago quarter.
• Wall Street earnings expectations: The average analyst estimate is earnings of $0.25 per share. Estimates range from $0.23 to $0.27.

What our community says:
CAPS All-Stars are solidly backing the stock with 94.3% giving it an outperform rating. The community at large concurs with the All-Stars with 92.9% granting it a rating of outperform. Fools have embraced ATMI, though the message boards have been quiet lately with only 27 posts in the past 30 days. ATMI has a bullish CAPS rating of five out of five stars that is about on par with the Fool community assessment.

Management:
ATMI's profit has risen year over year by an average of 45.3% 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.

Quarter	Q2	Q1	Q4	Q3
Gross Margin	47.5%	47.7%	47%	48.1%
Operating Margin	14.8%	11.6%	9.0%	11.3%
Net Margin	10.7%	7.9%	14.3%	10.0%

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