Nucor Earnings Preview

Investors are on the edge of their collective seats, hoping that Nucor (NYSE: NUE  ) will top analyst expectations for the third consecutive quarter. The company will unveil its latest earnings Thursday. Nucor and its affiliates manufacture steel and steel products for customers mainly in North America.

What analysts say:

• Buy, sell, or hold?: Analysts are bullish on this stock with eight analysts rating it as a buy and only one rating it as a sell. Analysts like Nucor better than competitor Gerdau overall. Wall Street has warmed to the stock over the past three months, with analysts increasing their endorsement from hold to moderate buy.
• Revenue Forecasts: On average, analysts predict $4.87 billion in revenue this quarter. That would represent a rise of 17.6% from the year-ago quarter.
• Wall Street Earnings Expectations: The average analyst estimate is earnings of $0.50 per share. Estimates range from $0.44 to $0.55.

What our community says:
CAPS All-Stars are solidly behind the stock with 97.5% assigning it an "outperform" rating. The community at large concurs with the All-Stars with 96.6% granting it a rating of "outperform." Fools are gung-ho about Nucor and haven't been shy with their opinions lately, logging 647 posts in the past 30 days. Nucor has a bullish CAPS rating of five out of five stars that is about on par with the Fool community assessment.

Management:
The company increased its gross margin by 5.7 percentage points in the last quarter. Revenue rose 21.7% while cost of sales rose 14.2% to $4.44 billion from a year earlier.

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	13%	9.1%	3.4%	4.6%
Operating Margin	9.3%	5.5%	(0.3%)	1.5%
Net Margin	5.9%	3.3%	(0.3%)	0.6%

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

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