Volterra Semiconductor (Nasdaq: VLTR) only managed to meet estimates last quarter, but investors hope it will surpass expectations this quarter. The company will unveil its latest earnings on Monday. Volterra Semiconductor designs, develops, and markets proprietary, high-performance analog and mixed-signal power management semiconductors for the computing, storage, networking, and consumer markets.

What analysts say:

  • Buy, sell, or hold?: Analysts strongly back Volterra Semiconductor, with nine of 13 rating it a buy and the remainder rating it a hold. Analysts don't like Volterra Semiconductor as much as competitor Micrel overall. 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 $38.3 million in revenue this quarter. That would represent a rise of 7.9% from the year-ago quarter.
  • Wall Street earnings expectations: The average analyst estimate is earnings of $0.18 per share. Estimates range from $0.16 to $0.21.

What our community says:
CAPS All-Stars are solidly behind the stock with 88.9% assigning it an outperform rating. The community at large agrees with the All-Stars with 85.8% awarding it a rating of outperform. Fools are bullish on Volterra Semiconductor, though the message boards have been quiet lately with only 31 posts in the past 30 days. Volterra Semiconductor's bearish CAPS rating of two out of five stars falls short of the Fool community sentiment.

Management:
Volterra Semiconductor's income has fallen year over year by an average of 43.4% over the past five quarters. The company's gross margin shrank by 4.4 percentage points in the last quarter. Revenue fell 0.5% while cost of sales rose 10.7% to $17.8 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

Q3

Q2

Q1

Q4

Gross Margin

57.0%

56.7%

57.6%

59.9%

Operating Margin

17%

13.1%

8.0%

10.0%

Net Margin

16.8%

12.8%

7.8%

9.6%

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Earnings estimates provided by Zacks.