Spartan Motors Earnings Preview

Investors braced for a bumpy ride ahead of Spartan Motors' (Nasdaq: SPAR  ) 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 Wednesday. Spartan Motors is an international manufacturer of custom motor vehicle chassis and bodies.

What analysts say:

• Buy, sell, or hold?: Analysts think investors should stand pat on Spartan Motors with two of three analysts rating it hold. Analysts don't like Spartan Motors as much as competitor Miller Industries overall. Two out of two analysts rate Miller Industries a buy compared to one of three for Spartan Motors. Spartan Motors' rating hasn't changed over the past three months.
• Revenue forecasts: On average, analysts predict $106.5 million in revenue this quarter. That would represent a decline of 11.6% from the year-ago quarter.
• Wall Street earnings expectations: The average analyst estimate is earnings of $0.03 per share.

What our community says:
CAPS All-Stars are solidly behind the stock with 96.9% granting it an outperform rating. The community at large agrees with the All-Stars with 95.4% assigning it a rating of outperform. Fools are keen on Spartan Motors and haven't been shy with their opinions lately, logging 255 posts in the past 30 days. Spartan Motors has a bullish CAPS rating of five out of five stars that is about on par with the Fool community assessment.

Management:
Revenue has fallen in the past two 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	12.8%	13.6%	15.3%	16.4%
Operating Margin	(3.7%)	(1.4%)	3.6%	4.5%
Net Margin	(2.2%)	(0.9%)	2.7%	2.8%

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