Huntington Bancshares Earnings Preview

Investors hope Huntington Bancshares (Nasdaq: HBAN  ) will top analyst estimates once again after beating predictions by $0.01 in the previous quarter. The company will unveil its latest earnings on Thursday. Huntington Bancshares is a financial holding company that offers various financial services through its subsidiary in several states.

What analysts say:

• Buy, sell, or hold?: The majority of analysts back Huntington Bancshares as a buy. But with 52.9% of analysts rating it a buy, Huntington Bancshares is still below the mean analyst rating of its nearest 10 competitors, which average 66.3% buys. Analysts like Huntington Bancshares better than competitor FirstMerit overall. Four out of 11 analysts rate FirstMerit a buy compared to nine of 17 for Huntington Bancshares.
• Revenue forecasts: On average, analysts predict $665.9 million in revenue this quarter. That would represent a decline of 1.6% from the year-ago quarter.
• Wall Street earnings expectations: The average analyst estimate is earnings of $0.17 per share. Estimates range from $0.15 to $0.18.

What our community says:
The majority of CAPS All-Stars see HBAN as a good bet, with 71.7% giving it an outperform rating. The majority of the Fools are in agreement with the All-Stars as 79.9% give it an "outperform" rating. Fools are gung-ho about Huntington Bancshares and haven't been shy with their opinions lately, logging 298 posts in the past 30 days. Huntington Bancshares' bearish CAPS rating of two out of five stars falls short of the Fool community sentiment.

Management:
Huntington Bancshares' profit has risen year over year by an average of 30.9% 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	19.5%	17.0%	15.5%	12.5%

For all our Huntington Bancshares-specific analysis, including earnings and beyond, add Huntington Bancshares to My Watchlist.

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