Investors braced for a bumpy ride ahead of E.W. Scripps' (NYSE: SSP) 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 Tuesday. E. W. Scripps is a media company with interests in national television networks, newspaper publishing, broadcast television, interactive media, and licensing and syndication.

What analysts say:

  • Buy, sell, or hold?: Analysts are very bullish on this stock, unanimously backing it as a buy. Analysts like E.W. Scripps better than competitor Journal Communications overall. One out of two analysts rate Journal Communications a buy compared to two of two for E.W. Scripps. Analysts' rating of E.W. Scripps has stayed constant from three months prior.
  • Revenue forecasts: On average, analysts predict $168.2 million in revenue this quarter. That would represent a decline of 8.4% from the year-ago quarter.
  • Wall Street earnings expectations: The average analyst estimate is a loss of $0.13 per share.

What our community says:
The majority of CAPS All-Stars see SSP as a good bet, with 64.7% granting it an outperform rating. The majority of the Fools are in agreement with the All-Stars as 66.3% give it an outperform rating. Fools are bullish on E.W. Scripps, though the message boards have been quiet lately with only 42 posts in the past 30 days. E.W. Scripps' bearish CAPS rating of one out of five stars falls short of the Fool community sentiment.

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

84.7%

84.2%

87.6%

85.3%

Operating Margin

(1.2%)

(5.8%)

13.1%

0.4%

Net Margin

(1.2%)

(4.9%)

11.6%

3.4%

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