UGI (NYSE: UGI) 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 Tuesday. UGI is a domestic and international retail distributor of propane and butane, natural gas, and electric service through regulated local distribution utilities.

What analysts say:

  • Buy, sell, or hold?: Half of analysts think investors should stand pat on UGI while the remaining half rate the stock as a buy. Analysts like UGI better than competitor AGL Resources overall. One out of six analysts rate AGL Resources a buy compared to one of two for UGI. Analysts' rating of UGI has stayed constant from three months prior.
  • Revenue forecasts: On average, analysts predict $1.02 billion in revenue this quarter. That would represent a rise of 14.6% from the year-ago quarter.
  • Wall Street earnings expectations: The average analyst estimate is a loss of $0.08 per share. Estimates range from a loss of $0.09 to a loss of $0.06.

What our community says:
CAPS All-Stars are solidly backing the stock with 96.3% giving it an outperform rating. The community at large concurs with the All-Stars with 94.9% assigning it a rating of outperform. Fools are bullish on UGI, though the message boards have been quiet lately with only 38 posts in the past 30 days. Even with a robust four out of five stars, UGI's CAPS rating falls a little short of the community's upbeat outlook.

Management:
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 and net margins over the past four quarters.

Quarter

Q3

Q2

Q1

Q4

Gross Margin

33.9%

34.7%

16.5%

3.5%

Net Margin

(0.7%)

6.9%

6.4%

0.2%

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