Investors braced for a bumpy ride ahead of FirstMerit's (Nasdaq: FMER) 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 Tuesday. FirstMerit provides a range of banking services to corporate, institutional, and individual customers throughout Northern and Central Ohio and Western Pennsylvania.

What analysts say:

  • Buy, sell, or hold?: Analysts think investors should stand pat on FirstMerit with eight of 13 analysts rating it hold. Analysts don't like FirstMerit as much as competitor TCF overall. Eight out of 19 analysts rate TCF a buy compared to four of 13 for FirstMerit. While analysts still rate the stock a hold, they are a little more optimistic about it compared to three months ago.
  • Revenue forecasts: On average, analysts predict $174.3 million in revenue this quarter. That would represent a decline of 4.3% from the year-ago quarter.
  • Wall Street earnings expectations: The average analyst estimate is earnings of $0.26 per share. Estimates range from $0.23 to $0.28.

What our community says:
The majority of CAPS All-Stars see FMER as a good bet, with 64.1% granting it an outperform rating. The majority of the Fools are in agreement with the All-Stars as 71% give it an outperform rating. Fools are keen on FirstMerit, though the message boards have been quiet lately with only 41 posts in the past 30 days. FirstMerit's bearish CAPS rating of two out of five stars falls short of the Fool community sentiment.

Management:
FirstMerit's profit has risen year over year by an average of 35.9% over the past five quarters. Revenue has fallen in the past two 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 net margins over the past four quarters.

Quarter

Q3

Q2

Q1

Q4

Net Margin

16.3%

16.1%

14.4%

13.4%

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

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Earnings estimates provided by Zacks.