Informatica Earnings Preview

Informatica (Nasdaq: INFA  ) didn't hit the Street's expectations last quarter, but investors hope that it will rebound this quarter. The company will unveil its latest earnings on Thursday, Oct. 20. Informatica is an independent provider of enterprise data integration and data quality software and services.

What analysts say:

• Buy, sell, or hold?: The majority of analysts back Informatica as a buy. But with 70.6% of analysts rating it a buy, Informatica is still below the mean analyst rating of its nearest 10 competitors, which average 78.6% buys. Analysts don't like Informatica as much as competitor Progress Software overall. Three out of three analysts rate Progress Software a buy compared to 12 of 17 for Informatica. Analysts haven't adjusted their rating of Informatica for the past three months.
• Revenue Forecasts: On average, analysts predict $195.4 million in revenue this quarter. That would represent a rise of 21.2% from the year-ago quarter.
• Wall Street Earnings Expectations: The average analyst estimate is earnings of $0.27 per share. Estimates range from $0.26 to $0.29.

What our community says:
CAPS All-Stars are solidly backing the stock with 97.5% assigning it an "outperform" rating. The community at large concurs with the All-Stars, with 94.5% giving it a rating of "outperform." Fools have embraced Informatica, though the message boards have been quiet lately with only 74 posts in the past 30 days. Even with a robust four out of five stars, Informatica's CAPS rating falls a little short of the community's upbeat outlook.

Management:
Informatica's profit has risen year over year by an average of 53.4% 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	81.6%	80.3%	83.9%	81.5%
Operating Margin	18.8%	19.0%	24.8%	20.1%
Net Margin	13.6%	13.0%	17.5%	13.9%

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