comScore Earnings Preview

comScore (Nasdaq: SCOR  ) will try to beat its earnings estimates for the third consecutive quarter. The company will unveil its latest earnings on Tuesday, February 14. comScore provides a digital marketing intelligence platform that helps customers make better-informed business decisions and implement more effective digital business strategies.

What analysts say:

• Buy, sell, or hold?: The majority of analysts back comScore as a buy. But with 80% of analysts rating it a buy, comScore is still below the mean analyst rating of its nearest nine competitors, which average 82.6% buys. Analysts like comScore better than competitor Arbitron overall. Three out of five analysts rate Arbitron a buy compared to four of five for comScore. 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 $63.4 million in revenue this quarter. That would represent a rise of 23.8% from the year-ago quarter.
• Wall Street Earnings Expectations: The average analyst estimate is a loss of $0.05 per share. Estimates range from a loss of $0.13 to a loss of $0.02.

What our community says:
CAPS All-Stars are in strong support of the stock, with 85.7% assigning it an "outperform" rating. Most of the community agrees with the All-Stars, with 82.4% giving it a rating of "outperform." Fools are keen on comScore, though the message boards have been quiet lately with only 51 posts in the past 30 days. comScore's bearish CAPS rating of one out of five stars falls short of the Fool community sentiment.

Management:
The company's gross margin shrank by 3.2 percentage points in the last quarter. Revenue rose 28.6% while cost of sales rose 42.3% to $19.6 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. comScore has seen decreasing gross margins year-over-year for the last four quarters. Gross margins reflect the total sales revenue retained after costs. See how comScore has been doing for the last four quarters: 

For all our comScore-specific analysis, including earnings and beyond, add comScore to My Watchlist.

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Earnings estimates provided by Zacks.