Casey's General Stores Earnings Preview

Casey's General Stores (Nasdaq: CASY  ) 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. Casey's General Stores and its wholly owned subsidiaries operate convenience stores under the names "Casey's General Store," "HandiMart," and "Just Diesel" in nine Midwestern states.

What analysts say:

• Buy, sell, or hold?: The majority of analysts back Casey's General Stores as a buy. But with 57.1% of analysts rating it a buy, Casey's General Stores is still below the mean analyst rating of its nearest 10 competitors, which average 60% buys. Analysts still rate the stock a moderate buy, but they are a bit more wary about it compared to three months ago.
• Revenue forecasts: On average, analysts predict $1.85 billion in revenue this quarter. That would represent a rise of 37% from the year-ago quarter.
• Wall Street earnings expectations: The average analyst estimate is earnings of $0.97 per share. Estimates range from $0.89 to $1.03.

What our community says:
CAPS All-Stars are solidly backing the stock with 93% awarding it an outperform rating. The community at large agrees with the All-Stars with 88.7% giving it a rating of outperform. Fools are bullish on Casey's General Stores, though the message boards have been quiet lately with only 58 posts in the past 30 days. Casey's General Stores' bearish CAPS rating of two out of five stars falls short of the Fool community sentiment.

Management:
Casey's General Stores' income has fallen year over year by an average of 12.8% over the past five quarters. The company's gross margin shrank by 2.9 percentage points in the last quarter. Revenue rose 37.6% while cost of sales rose 42.5% to $1.61 billion 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.

One final thing: If you want to keep tabs on Casey's General Stores movements, and for more analysis on the company, make sure you add it to your watchlist.

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