Alliant Energy Earnings Preview

Alliant Energy (NYSE: LNT  ) 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 Friday. Alliant Energy is an investor-owned public utility holding.

What analysts say:

• Buy, sell, or hold?: Half of analysts think investors should stand pat on Alliant Energy while the remaining half rate the stock as a buy. Analysts like Alliant Energy better than competitor Integrys Energy Group overall. One out of seven analysts rate Integrys Energy Group a buy compared to five of 10 for Alliant Energy. While analysts still rate the stock a moderate buy, they are a little more optimistic about it compared to three months ago.
• Revenue forecasts: On average, analysts predict $784.6 million in revenue this quarter. That would represent a decline of 5.8% from the year-ago quarter.
• Wall Street earnings expectations: The average analyst estimate is earnings of $0.55 per share. Estimates range from $0.54 to $0.58.

What our community says:
CAPS All-Stars are solidly supporting the stock, with 88% awarding it an outperform rating. Most of the community is in line with the All-Stars, with 86.4% granting it a rating of outperform. Fools are gung-ho about Alliant Energy, though the message boards have been quiet lately with only 27 posts in the past 30 days. Despite the majority sentiment in favor of Alliant Energy, the stock has a middling CAPS rating of three out of five stars.

Management:
Alliant Energy's profit has risen year-over-year by an average of 10.5% over the past five quarters. Revenue has now gone up for three straight quarters. The company's gross margin shrank by 7.8 percentage points in the last quarter. Revenue rose 7.3% while cost of sales rose 20.5% to $729.8 million from a year earlier.

Now let's get some insight into how efficient management is at running the business. Traditionally, margins represent the efficiency with which companies capture portions of sales dollars. Alliant Energy's gross margins, which reflect the total sales revenue that the company retains after costs decreased year-over-year in the last two quarters. Here is how Alliant Energy has been doing for the last four quarters:

Quarter	Q3	Q2	Q1	Q4
Gross Margin	28.6%	21.9%	24.6%	24.1%
Net Margin	12.3%	6.7%	8.4%	6.2%

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Earnings estimates provided by Zacks.