PacWest Bancorp Earnings Preview

Investors braced for a bumpy ride ahead of PacWest Bancorp's (Nasdaq: PACW  ) earnings announcement as the company has wavered between beating and falling short of analyst predictions during the past fiscal year. The company will unveil its latest earnings on Thursday. PacWest Bancorp offers a range of banking products and services through its subsidiary, Pacific Western Bank.

What analysts say:

• Buy, sell, or hold?: Analysts think investors should stand pat on PacWest Bancorp with six of 10 analysts rating it hold. Analysts don't like PacWest Bancorp as much as competitor Nara Bancorp overall. Five out of six analysts rate Nara Bancorp a buy compared to four of 10 for PacWest Bancorp. 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 $71.8 million in revenue this quarter. That would represent a decline of 5.5% from the year-ago quarter.
• Wall Street earnings expectations: The average analyst estimate is earnings of $0.33 per share. Estimates range from $0.29 to $0.37.

What our community says:
The majority of CAPS All-Stars see PACW as a good bet, with 55.9% granting it an outperform rating. The community is of two minds on the stock with 49.5% Fools assigning it an outperform rating and 50.5% an underperform rating. Fools have embraced PacWest Bancorp, though the message boards have been quiet lately with only 40 posts in the past 30 days. PacWest Bancorp's bearish CAPS rating of one out of five stars falls short of the Fool community sentiment.

Management:

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	15.4%	13.2%	(9.2%)	4.1%

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