Briggs & Stratton Earnings Preview

Briggs & Stratton (NYSE: BGG  ) 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 Thursday, Jan. 26. Briggs & Stratton is a producer of air-cooled gasoline engines for outdoor power equipment. It designs, manufactures, markets, and services these products for original equipment manufacturers worldwide.

What analysts say:

• Buy, sell, or hold?: Half of analysts think investors should stand pat on Briggs & Stratton while the remaining half rate the stock as a buy. Wall Street has warmed to the stock over the past three months, with analysts increasing their endorsement from hold to moderate buy.
• Revenue forecasts: On average, analysts predict $457.1 million in revenue this quarter. That would represent a rise of 1.5% from the year-ago quarter.
• Wall Street earnings expectations: The average analyst estimate is earnings of $0.05 per share. Estimates range from breaking even to a profit of $0.12.

What our community says:
The majority of CAPS All-Stars see Briggs & Stratton as a good bet, with 66.7% assigning it an outperform rating. The majority of the Fools are in agreement with the All-Stars, as 74.4% give it an outperform rating. Fools have embraced Briggs & Stratton, though the message boards have been quiet lately, with only 63 posts in the past 30 days. Briggs & Stratton's bearish CAPS rating of two out of five stars falls short of the Fool community sentiment.

Management:

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	16.6%	17.9%	20.8%	17.4%
Operating Margin	(0.4%)	(4.2%)	10.9%	0.8%
Net Margin	(1.3%)	(2.9%)	7.2%	(0.3%)

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Earnings estimates provided by Zacks.