AAON Earnings Preview

AAON (Nasdaq: AAON  ) came in under analysts' estimates last quarter but now has a chance to fix things this quarter. The company will unveil its latest earnings on Tuesday. AAON is engaged in the manufacture and sale of air-conditioning and heating equipment.

What analysts say:

• Buy, sell, or hold?: Analysts don't like AAON as much as competitor Lennox International overall. Four out of eight analysts rate Lennox International a buy compared to zero of one for AAON. AAON's rating hasn't changed over the past three months.
• Revenue forecasts:
• Wall Street earnings expectations: The average analyst estimate is earnings of $0.21 per share.

What our community says:
CAPS All-Stars are solidly behind the stock with 99.1% granting it an outperform rating. The community at large concurs with the All-Stars with 96.1% awarding it a rating of outperform. Fools are bullish on AAON and haven't been shy with their opinions lately, logging 101 posts in the past 30 days. AAON has a bullish CAPS rating of five out of five stars that is about on par with the Fool community assessment.

Management:
AAON's income has fallen year over year by an average of 25.5% over the past five quarters. Revenue has now gone up for three straight quarters. The company's gross margin shrank by seven percentage points in the last quarter. Revenue rose 7% while cost of sales rose 17% to $57.3 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	Q2	Q1	Q4	Q3
Gross Margin	17.0%	19.4%	21.6%	19.3%
Operating Margin	8.7%	10.2%	12.6%	11.3%
Net Margin	5.6%	6.1%	8.8%	8.0%

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