Intersil Earnings Preview

Intersil (Nasdaq: ISIL  ) met its estimates last quarter, but investors hope that it will beat them this quarter. The company will unveil its latest earnings on Wednesday. Intersil designs, develops, manufactures and markets analog and mixed-signal integrated circuits for applications in the high-end consumer, industrial, communications and computing electronics markets.

What analysts say:

• Buy, sell, or hold?: Analysts think investors should stand pat on Intersil with 16 of 23 analysts rating it hold. Analysts don't like Intersil as much as competitor Fairchild Semiconductor International overall. Six out of 11 analysts rate Fairchild Semiconductor International a buy compared to six of 23 for Intersil. While analysts still rate the stock a hold, they are a little more optimistic about it compared to three months ago.
• Revenue forecasts: On average, analysts predict $185.9 million in revenue this quarter. That would represent a decline of 15.1% from the year-ago quarter.
• Wall Street earnings expectations: The average analyst estimate is earnings of $0.08 per share. Estimates range from $0.03 to $0.16.

What our community says:
CAPS All-Stars are solidly backing the stock with 96.7% assigning it an outperform rating. The community at large agrees with the All-Stars with 93% granting it a rating of outperform. Fools are bullish on Intersil, though the message boards have been quiet lately with only 56 posts in the past 30 days. Even with a robust four out of five stars, Intersil's CAPS rating falls a little short of the community's upbeat outlook.

Management:
A year-over-year revenue decrease last quarter snaps a streak of three consecutive quarters of revenue increases.

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	58.2%	57.8%	58.8%	58.9%
Operating Margin	14.8%	10.5%	11.8%	17.5%
Net Margin	10.4%	7.1%	13.4%	14.6%

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