National Financial Partners Earnings Preview

National Financial Partners (NYSE: NFP  ) 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 Tuesday, Feb. 7. National Financial Partners is an independent financial services distribution company.

What analysts say:

• Buy, sell, or hold?: Analysts are bullish on National Financial Partners, as two analysts rate it as a buy and only one analyst rates it as a sell. Analysts are a little more optimistic about it compared to three months ago.
• Revenue forecasts: On average, analysts predict $288.6 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 $0.63 per share. Estimates range from $0.61 to $0.65.

What our community says:
CAPS All-Stars are solidly backing the stock, with 93.5% giving it an outperform rating. Most of the community is in line with the All-Stars, with 86.1% granting it a rating of outperform. Fools are impressed with National Financial Partners, though the message boards have been quiet lately, with only 44 posts in the past 30 days. National Financial Partners' bearish CAPS rating of two out of five stars falls short of the Fool community sentiment.

Management:
National Financial Partners' profit has risen year over year by an average of more than twofold over the past five quarters. Revenue has now gone up for three straight quarters. The company's gross margin shrank by 2.1 percentage points in the last quarter. Revenue rose 5.9% while cost of sales rose 13.5% to $80.3 million from a year earlier.

Now let's look at how efficient management is at running the business. Margins illustrate how efficiently a company captures portions of sales dollars. The company's gross margins decreased in the last two quarters year over year. Gross margins reflect the total sales revenue retained after costs. Here are National Financial Partners' reported margins for the last four quarters:

Quarter	Q3	Q2	Q1	Q4
Gross Margin	68.1%	67.9%	66.1%	67.9%
Operating Margin	7.2%	7.6%	5.6%	8.8%
Net Margin	3.7%	4%	2.9%	5.4%

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

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Earnings estimates provided by Zacks.