National Financial Partners Earnings Preview

National Financial Partners (NYSE: NFP  ) 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 Thursday, Oct. 27. National Financial Partners is an independent financial services distribution company.

What analysts say:

• Buy, sell, or hold?: Analysts think investors should stand pat on National Financial Partners, with three of five analysts rating it hold. Though analysts still rate the stock a hold, they are a bit more wary about it compared to three months ago.
• Revenue forecasts: On average, analysts predict $251.1 million in revenue this quarter. That would represent a rise of 5.7% from the year-ago quarter.
• Wall Street earnings expectations: The average analyst estimate is earnings of $0.51 per share.

What our community says:
CAPS All-Stars are solidly backing the stock, with 92.9% awarding it an outperform rating. The community at large agrees with the All-Stars, with 86.4% granting it a rating of outperform. Fools are gung-ho about National Financial Partners, though the message boards have been quiet lately, with only 44 posts in the past 30 days. National Financial Partners' bearish CAPS rating of two out of five stars falls short of the Fool community sentiment.

Management:
National Financial Partners' profit has risen year over year by an average of more than twofold 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	67.9%	66.1%	67.9%	70.2%
Operating Margin	7.6%	5.6%	8.8%	0.9%
Net Margin	4%	2.9%	5.4%	3.5%

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