SanDisk Earnings Preview

Investors are on the edge of their seats, hoping that SanDisk (Nasdaq: SNDK  ) will top analyst expectations for the fifth consecutive quarter. The company will unveil its latest earnings on Thursday, Oct. 20. SanDisk is a multinational corporation whose main focus is the design, development, manufacturing, and marketing of flash memory card products. Its data-storage solutions include removable cards and USB drives, which can be used in a wide gamut of consumer electronics products, such as digital cameras and mobile phones.

What analysts say:

• Buy, sell, or hold?: Analysts are bullish on this stock with 18 analysts rating it as a buy and only one rating it as a sell. Analysts like SanDisk better than competitor Western Digital overall. Analysts still rate the stock a moderate buy, but they are a bit more wary about it compared to three months ago.
• Revenue forecasts: On average, analysts predict $1.42 billion in revenue this quarter. That would represent a rise of 15.4% from the year-ago quarter.
• Wall Street earnings expectations: The average analyst estimate is earnings of $1.02 per share. Estimates range from $0.96 to $1.09.

What our community says:
CAPS All-Stars are solidly backing the stock with 95.5% assigning it an "outperform" rating. The community at large agrees with the All-Stars with 93.2% granting it a rating of "outperform." Fools have embraced SanDisk and haven't been shy with their opinions lately, logging 825 posts in the past 30 days. Even with a robust four out of five stars, SanDisk's CAPS rating falls a little short of the community's upbeat outlook.

Management:
SanDisk's profit has risen year over year by an average of 18.5% over the past five quarters. Revenue has now gone up for three straight 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	44.6%	42.6%	43.4%	51.8%
Operating Margin	27.6%	27.0%	26.9%	35.0%
Net Margin	18.1%	17.3%	36.6%	26.1%

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