Seneca Foods Earnings Preview

Seneca Foods (Nasdaq: SENEA  ) didn't meet the Street's expectations last quarter, but investors hope that it will rebound this quarter. The company will unveil its latest earnings on Thursday, Oct. 27. Seneca Foods is a producer and distributor of processed fruits and vegetables.

What analysts say:

• Buy, sell, or hold?: Half of analysts think investors should stand pat on Seneca Foods. Analysts haven't adjusted their rating of Seneca Foods for the past three months.
• Revenue forecasts: On average, analysts predict $292.1 million in revenue this quarter. That would represent a rise of 6% from the year-ago quarter.
• Wall Street earnings expectations: The average analyst estimate is a loss of $0.04 per share. Estimates range from a loss of $0.06 to a loss of $0.02.

What our community says:
CAPS All-Stars are solidly backing the stock with 100% granting it an "outperform" rating. The community at large agrees with the All-Stars with 97.5% assigning it a rating of "outperform." Fools are bullish on Seneca Foods, though the message boards have been quiet lately with only 21 posts in the past 30 days. Even with a robust four out of five stars, Seneca Foods' CAPS rating falls a little short of the community's upbeat outlook.

Management:
The company's gross margin shrank by 9.2 percentage points in the last quarter. Revenue rose 17.8% while cost of sales rose 30.1% to $253.2 million from a year earlier.

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	Q1	Q4	Q3	Q2
Gross Margin	2.3%	5.7%	7.7%	6.9%
Operating Margin	(3.9%)	(0.4%)	4.3%	1.5%
Net Margin	(3.1%)	(0.7%)	2.6%	1.0%

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