State Street Earnings Preview

State Street (NYSE: STT  ) will try to beat its earnings estimates for the fourth consecutive quarter. The company will unveil its latest earnings on Tuesday. State Street provides a range of investment management strategies, investment management advisory services, and other financial services.

What analysts say:

• Buy, sell, or hold?: Analysts strongly back State Street, with 14 of 19 rating it a buy and the remainder rating it a hold. Analysts like State Street better than competitor Bank of New York Mellon overall. While analysts still rate the stock a moderate buy, they are a little more optimistic about it compared to three months ago.
• Revenue forecasts: On average, analysts predict $2.38 billion in revenue this quarter. That would represent a rise of 10.7% from the year-ago quarter.
• Wall Street earnings expectations: The average analyst estimate is earnings of $0.88 per share. Estimates range from $0.71 to $0.93.

What our community says:
The majority of CAPS All-Stars see STT as a good bet, with 67.8% giving it an outperform rating. The majority of the Fools are in agreement with the All-Stars as 74.5% give it an outperform rating. Fools are gung-ho about State Street and haven't been shy with their opinions lately, logging 198 posts in the past 30 days. State Street's bearish CAPS rating of two out of five stars falls short of the Fool community sentiment.

Management:
Revenue has fallen in the past two 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	19.1%	18.4%	2.9%	21.9%

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

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