EZCORP Earnings Preview

EZCORP (Nasdaq: EZPW  ) met its estimates last quarter, but investors hope that it will beat them this quarter. The company will unveil its latest earnings on Tuesday, Nov. 8. EZCORP is a provider of specialty consumer financial services. The company operates pawn stores in the United States principally under the EZPAWN and Value Pawn brands, and in Mexico under the EMPENO FACIL and EMPENE SU ORO brands.

What analysts say:

• Buy, sell, or hold?: The majority of analysts back EZCORP as a buy. But with 71.4% of analysts rating it a buy, EZCORP is still below the mean analyst rating of its nearest 10 competitors, which average 77.4% buys. Analysts don't like EZCORP as much as competitor Dollar overall. Seven out of eight analysts rate Dollar a buy compared to five of seven for EZCORP.
• Revenue Forecasts: On average, analysts predict $226.5 million in revenue this quarter. That would represent a rise of 14.3% from the year-ago quarter.
• Wall Street Earnings Expectations: The average analyst estimate is earnings of $0.70 per share. Estimates range from $0.69 to $0.72.

What our community says:
CAPS All-Stars are solidly backing the stock with 97.9% awarding it an "outperform" rating. The community at large agrees with the All-Stars with 96.4% granting it a rating of "outperform." Fools are keen on EZCORP and haven't been shy with their opinions lately, logging 218 posts in the past 30 days. Even with a robust four out of five stars, EZCORP's CAPS rating falls a little short of the community's upbeat outlook.

Management:
EZCORP's profit has risen year over year by an average of 26.6% over the past five 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	Q3	Q2	Q1	Q4
Gross Margin	60.5%	61.4%	61.3%	60.6%
Operating Margin	18.2%	21.0%	18.0%	20.2%
Net Margin	13.1%	14.9%	12.5%	14.1%

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