Owens & Minor (NYSE: OMI) hasn't been able to establish an earnings trend, bouncing between beating and falling short of estimates during the past fiscal year. The company will unveil its latest earnings on Monday. Owens & Minor is a distributor of medical and surgical supplies to the acute-care market and a health-care supply-chain management company.

What analysts say:

  • Buy, sell, or hold?: Analysts think investors should stand pat on Owens & Minor with seven of nine analysts rating it hold. Analysts don't like Owens & Minor as much as competitor Lincare Holdings overall. Four out of eight analysts rate Lincare Holdings a buy compared to one of nine for Owens & Minor. Analysts' rating of Owens & Minor has stayed constant from three months prior.
  • Revenue forecasts: On average, analysts predict $2.16 billion in revenue this quarter. That would represent a rise of 4.9% from the year-ago quarter.
  • Wall Street earnings expectations: The average analyst estimate is earnings of $0.51 per share. Estimates range from $0.48 to $0.52.

What our community says:
CAPS All-Stars are solidly behind the stock with 94.3% awarding it an outperform rating. The community at large agrees with the All-Stars with 92.9% assigning it a rating of outperform. Fools are gung-ho about Owens & Minor, though the message boards have been quiet lately with only 37 posts in the past 30 days. Despite the majority sentiment in favor of Owens & Minor, the stock has a middling CAPS rating of three out of five stars.

Management:
Owens & Minor's income has fallen year over year by an average of 9.9% 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

10.1%

9.9%

11.0%

9.6%

Operating Margin

2.4%

2.4%

1.9%

2.7%

Net Margin

1.4%

1.4%

1.1%

1.5%

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