Church & Dwight Earnings Preview

Investors hope Church & Dwight (NYSE: CHD  ) will top analyst estimates once again after beating predictions by $0.01 in the previous quarter. The company will unveil its latest earnings on Tuesday. Church & Dwight develops, manufactures, and markets a broad range of household, personal care, and specialty products. The company focuses its marketing efforts mainly on its eight power brands.

What analysts say:

• Buy, sell, or hold?: Half of analysts think investors should stand pat on Church & Dwight. Analysts like Church & Dwight better than competitor Clorox Company overall. Zero out of 15 analysts rate Clorox Co. a buy compared to six of 16 for Church & Dwight. While analysts still rate the stock a hold, they are a little more optimistic about it compared to three months ago.
• Revenue forecasts: On average, analysts predict $694.3 million in revenue this quarter. That would represent a rise of 5.7% from the year-ago quarter.
• Wall Street earnings expectations: The average analyst estimate is earnings of $0.51 per share. Estimates range from $0.49 to $0.52.

What our community says:
CAPS All-Stars are strongly supporting the stock, with 97.8% awarding it an outperform rating. The greater community agrees with the All-Stars, as 95.6% give it a rating of outperform. Fools have embraced Church & Dwight and haven't been shy with their opinions lately, logging 137 posts in the past 30 days. Even with a robust four out of five stars, Church & Dwight's CAPS rating falls a little short of the community's upbeat outlook.

Management:
Church & Dwight's profit has risen year-over-year by an average of 4.8% over the past five quarters. Revenue has now gone up for three straight quarters.

Now, a look at how efficient management has been at running the business. Margins are a representation of how efficiently a company captures portions of sales dollars. Church & Dwight's net margins have increased year-over-year for the last three quarters. Net margins reflect what percentage of revenue becomes profit. Here is how Church & Dwight has been doing for the last four quarters:

Quarter	Q3	Q2	Q1	Q4
Gross Margin	44.2%	44.5%	44.9%	44.5%
Operating Margin	18.0%	17.5%	20.4%	12.2%
Net Margin	11.4%	12.2%	13.0%	7.2%

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Earnings estimates provided by Zacks.