Apogee Enterprises Earnings Preview

Apogee Enterprises (Nasdaq: APOG  ) 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 Wednesday. Apogee Enterprises provides technologies involving the design and development of value-added glass products, services, and systems.

What analysts say:

• Buy, sell, or hold?: Half of analysts think investors should stand pat on Apogee Enterprises while the remaining half rate the stock as a buy. While analysts still rate the stock a moderate buy, they are a little more optimistic about it compared to three months ago.
• Revenue forecasts: On average, analysts predict $170.8 million in revenue this quarter. That would represent a rise of 16.1% from the year-ago quarter.
• Wall Street earnings expectations: The average analyst estimate is earnings of $0.11 per share. Estimates range from $0.08 to $0.14.

What our community says:
CAPS All-Stars are solidly behind the stock with 95.1% giving it an outperform rating. The community at large agrees with the All-Stars with 93.5% awarding it a rating of outperform. Fools are bullish on Apogee Enterprises and haven't been shy with their opinions lately, logging 104 posts in the past 30 days. Even with a robust four out of five stars, Apogee Enterprises' CAPS rating falls a little short of the community's upbeat outlook.

Management:
The company's revenue has now risen for two straight quarters. The company boosted its gross margin by 3.2 percentage points in the last quarter. Revenue rose 14.5% while cost of sales rose 10.2% to $139.6 million 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.

Quarter	Q2	Q1	Q4	Q3
Gross Margin	15.7%	15.4%	15.7%	15.7%
Operating Margin	(1.6%)	(2.2%)	(3.8%)	(1.3%)
Net Margin	(1.0%)	(1.4%)	(3.0%)	(1.6%)

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Earnings estimates provided by Zacks