Rudolph Technologies Earnings Preview

Investors hope Rudolph Technologies (Nasdaq: RTEC  ) will top analyst estimates once again after beating predictions by $0.09 in the previous quarter. The company will unveil its latest earnings on Monday, Jan. 30. Rudolph Technologies designs, develops, manufactures, and supports high-performance process control equipment used in semiconductor device manufacturing.

What analysts say:

• Buy, sell, or hold?: Analysts are very bullish on this stock, unanimously backing it as a buy. Analysts like Rudolph Technologies better than competitor LTX-Credence overall. Four out of five analysts rate LTX-Credence a buy compared to three of three for Rudolph Technologies.
• Revenue Forecasts: On average, analysts predict $39 million in revenue this quarter. That would represent a decline of 27.8% from the year-ago quarter.
• Wall Street Earnings Expectations: The average analyst estimate is earnings of $0.06 per share.

What our community says:
CAPS All-Stars are strongly backing the stock, with 96.3% giving it an "outperform" rating. The community at large is in line with the All-Stars, with 92.1% awarding it a rating of "outperform." Fools are bullish on Rudolph Technologies, though the message boards have been quiet lately with only 37 posts in the past 30 days. Despite the majority sentiment in favor of Rudolph Technologies, the stock has a middling CAPS rating of three out of five stars.

Management:
Rudolph Technologies' income has fallen year-over-year by an average of 15.1% over the past five quarters. A year-over-year revenue decrease last quarter snaps a streak of three consecutive quarters of revenue increases. The company's gross margin shrank by 2.2 percentage points in the last quarter. Revenue fell 20.8% while cost of sales fell 16.8% to $19.2 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	53.7%	54.1%	53.9%	54.0%
Operating Margin	12.5%	15.5%	16.0%	20.3%
Net Margin	12.8%	13.5%	13.3%	17.7%

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