La-Z-Boy Earnings Preview (LZB)

La-Z-Boy Earnings Preview

By Motley Fool Staff | More Articles
November 17, 2011 | Comments (1)

Investors braced for a bumpy ride ahead of La-Z-Boy's (NYSE: LZB ) 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 Monday, Nov. 21. La-Z-Boy manufactures, markets, imports, distributes, and retails upholstery products and casegoods (wood) furniture products.

What analysts say:

Buy, sell, or hold?: Analysts strongly back La-Z-Boy, with four out of five rating it a buy and the remainder rating it a hold. Analysts don't like La-Z-Boy as much as competitor Natuzzi overall. Analysts haven't adjusted their rating of La-Z-Boy for the past three months.
Revenue forecasts: On average, analysts predict $310 million in revenue this quarter. That would represent a rise of 5.8% from the year-ago quarter.
Wall Street earnings expectations: The average analyst estimate is earnings of $0.14 per share. Estimates range from $0.12 to $0.17.

What our community says:
Most CAPS All-Stars are skeptical of La-Z-Boy prospects, with 65.5% assigning it an underperform rating. The community is of two minds on the stock, with 47% Fools giving it an outperform rating and 53% an underperform rating. Fools are bearish on La-Z-Boy and haven't been shy with their opinions lately, logging 153 posts in the past 30 days. La-Z-Boy's bearish CAPS rating of one out of five stars falls short of the Fool community sentiment.

Management:
The company's revenue has now risen for two 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, operating, and net margins over the past four quarters.

Quarter	Q1	Q4	Q3	Q2
Gross Margin	28.9%	31.9%	30.3%	29%
Operating Margin	1.2%	3.6%	3.4%	1.8%
Net Margin	16.3%	3%	3.4%	1.3%

We can help you keep tabs on your companies with My Watchlist, our free, personalized service. Add La-Z-Boy now.

Try any of our Foolish newsletter services free for 30 days. We Fools may not all hold the same opinions, but we all believe that considering a diverse range of insights makes us better investors. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.

Earnings estimates provided by Zacks.

Comments from our Foolish Readers

Help us keep this a respectfully Foolish area! This is a place for our readers to discuss, debate, and learn more about the Foolish investing topic you read about above. Help us keep it clean and safe. If you believe a comment is abusive or otherwise violates our Fool's Rules, please report it via the Report this Comment icon found on every comment.

Report this Comment On November 17, 2011, at 11:42 AM, FurnitureExpert wrote:

Having been in the furniture business for 25 years, and a heavy investor in the category, I laugh that so-called "experts" think Natuzzi is a stronger company than La-Z-Boy... just the brand name of La-Z-Boy has more value than the Natuzzi company which is an importer of Italian leather products and has been struggling at retail. La-Z-Boy is cash rich, carries little debt, has an excellent distribution system and offers one of the best values in the furniture business with much of its line American-made. In this economy, La-Z-Boy has been increasing market share as smaller stores close down in droves. I only see upside here.