Briggs & Stratton Earnings Preview

Briggs & Stratton (NYSE: BGG  ) hasn't been able to establish an earnings trend, bouncing between beating and falling short of estimates during the past fiscal year. The company will unveil its latest earnings on Thursday. Briggs & Stratton is a producer of air-cooled gasoline engines for outdoor power equipment. It designs, manufactures, markets, and services these products for original equipment manufacturers worldwide.

What analysts say:

• Buy, sell, or hold?: Analysts think investors should stand pat on Briggs & Stratton with three of five analysts rating it hold. Analysts like Briggs & Stratton better than competitor Blount International overall. One out of three analysts rate Blount International a buy compared to two of five for Briggs & Stratton. 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 $345.9 million in revenue this quarter. That would represent a rise of 3.5% from the year-ago quarter.
• Wall Street earnings expectations: The average analyst estimate is a loss of $0.21 per share. Estimates range from a loss of $0.28 to a loss of $0.18.

What our community says:
The majority of CAPS All-Stars see Briggs & Stratton as a good bet, with 69% granting it an outperform rating. The majority of the Fools are in agreement with the All-Stars as 75.2% give it an outperform rating. Fools are gung-ho about Briggs & Stratton, though the message boards have been quiet lately with only 62 posts in the past 30 days. Briggs & Stratton has a bullish CAPS rating of four out of five stars that is about on par with the Fool community assessment.

Management:
A year-over-year revenue decrease last quarter snaps a streak of three consecutive quarters of revenue increases.

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	Q4	Q3	Q2	Q1
Gross Margin	17.9%	20.8%	17.4%	18.6%
Operating Margin	(4.2%)	10.9%	0.8%	(2.5%)
Net Margin	(2.9%)	7.2%	(0.3%)	(2.4%)

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