Abaxis Earnings Preview

Investors hope Abaxis (Nasdaq: ABAX  ) will top analyst estimates once again after beating predictions by $0.01 in the previous quarter. The company will unveil its latest earnings on Thursday, Jan. 26. Abaxis develops, manufactures, markets, and sells portable blood analysis systems for use in the human or veterinary patient-care setting to provide clinicians with rapid blood constituent measurements.

What analysts say:

• Buy, sell, or hold?: Analysts strongly back Abaxis, with five of nine rating it a buy and the remainder rating it a hold. Analysts like Abaxis better than competitor SonoSite overall. Analysts still rate the stock a hold, but they are a bit more wary about it compared to three months ago.
• Revenue forecasts: On average, analysts predict $41 million in revenue this quarter. That would represent a rise of 14% from the year-ago quarter.
• Wall Street earnings expectations: The average analyst estimate is earnings of $0.16 per share. Estimates range from $0.14 to $0.20.

What our community says:
CAPS All-Stars are solidly behind the stock with 95.8% giving it an "outperform" rating. The community at large backs the All-Stars with 91.3% awarding it a rating of "outperform." Fools have embraced Abaxis, though the message boards have been quiet lately with only 65 posts in the past 30 days. Even with a robust four out of five stars, Abaxis' CAPS rating falls a little short of the community's upbeat outlook.

Management:
Abaxis' income has fallen year over year by an average of 2.5% over the past five quarters. Revenue has now gone up for three straight 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 gross, operating, and net margins over the past four quarters.

Quarter	Q2	Q1	Q4	Q3
Gross Margin	55.0%	53.4%	54.5%	55.2%
Operating Margin	12.9%	8.9%	14.1%	16.2%
Net Margin	8.3%	6.1%	9.0%	10.7%

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Earnings estimates provided by Zacks.