Panera Bread Earnings Preview

Watch Panera Bread's (Nasdaq: PNRA  ) earnings report to see if it can beat analyst expectations for the fifth consecutive quarter. The company will unveil its latest earnings on Tuesday. Panera Bread and its subsidiaries operate a retail bakery-cafe business and franchising business.

What analysts say:

• Buy, sell, or hold?: Analysts strongly back Panera Bread, with 12 of 20 rating it a buy and the remainder rating it a hold. Analysts like Panera Bread better than competitor Wendy's overall. Analysts still rate the stock a moderate buy, but they are a bit more wary about it compared to three months ago.
• Revenue forecasts: On average, analysts predict $499.1 million in revenue this quarter. That would represent a rise of 16.6% from the year-ago quarter.
• Wall Street earnings expectations: The average analyst estimate is earnings of $1.41 per share. Estimates range from $1.40 to $1.45.

What our community says:
CAPS All-Stars are strongly supporting the stock, with 93.4% giving it an outperform rating. The community at large backs the All-Stars, with 89.7% granting it a rating of outperform. Fools feel positively about Panera Bread and haven't been shy with their opinions lately, logging 568 posts in the past 30 days. Though still bullish, the CAPS rating of four out of five stars for Panera Bread is a bit more pessimistic than the community assessment.

Management:
Panera Bread's profit has risen year over year by an average of 27.5% over the past five quarters.

Now, a look at how efficient management has been at running the business. Traditionally, margins serve as an illustration of how efficiently a company captures portions of sales dollars. Panera Bread has seen increasing net margins year-over-year for the last four quarters. Net margins reflect what percentage of each dollar earned by the company becomes profit. Here is how Panera Bread has been doing for the last four quarters:

Quarter	Q3	Q2	Q1	Q4
Gross Margin	21.6%	22.9%	23.6%	25.5%
Operating Margin	10.5%	12.7%	12.6%	14.2%
Net Margin	6.4%	7.9%	7.8%	8.5%

One final thing: If you want to keep tabs on Panera Bread 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.