Silicon Laboratories Earnings Preview

Investors are on the edges of their seats, hoping that Silicon Laboratories (Nasdaq: SLAB  ) will top analyst expectations for the fifth consecutive quarter. The company will unveil its latest earnings on Wednesday, Jan. 25. Silicon Laboratories designs and develops proprietary, analog-intensive, and mixed-signal integrated circuits.

What analysts say:

• Buy, sell, or hold?: The majority of analysts back Silicon Laboratories as a buy. But with 54.5% of analysts rating it a buy, Silicon Laboratories is still below the mean analyst rating of its nearest 10 competitors, which average 68.9% buys. Analysts don't like Silicon Laboratories as much as competitor Semtech overall. Five out of five analysts rate Semtech a buy compared to six of 11 for Silicon Laboratories. Analysts' rating of Silicon Laboratories has stayed constant from three months prior.
• Revenue Forecasts: On average, analysts predict $119.8 million in revenue this quarter. That would represent a rise of 7.1% from the year-ago quarter.
• Wall Street Earnings Expectations: The average analyst estimate is earnings of $0.25 per share. Estimates range from $0.24 to $0.25.

What our community says:
CAPS All-Stars are solidly backing the stock with 97.8% awarding it an "outperform" rating. The community at large agrees with the All-Stars with 92.9% assigning it a rating of "outperform." Fools have embraced Silicon Laboratories, though the message boards have been quiet lately with only 94 posts in the past 30 days. Silicon Laboratories has a bullish CAPS rating of five out of five stars that is about on par with the Fool community assessment.

Management:
Revenue has fallen for the past three quarters. The company's gross margin shrank by 4.3 percentage points in the last quarter. Revenue fell 0.9% while cost of sales rose 11.4% to $46.2 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	61.2%	60.4%	60.3%	63.5%
Operating Margin	11.7%	12.7%	4.1%	9.8%
Net Margin	9.5%	10.6%	(1.6%)	11.5%

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

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