Spartan Motors Earnings Preview

Spartan Motors (Nasdaq: SPAR  ) 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. 14. Spartan Motors is an international manufacturer of custom motor vehicle chassis and bodies.

What analysts say:

• Buy, sell, or hold?: Half of analysts think investors should stand pat on Spartan Motors, while the remaining half rate the stock as a buy. Analysts don't like Spartan Motors as much as competitor Miller Industries overall. Two out of two analysts rate Miller Industries a buy compared to two out of four for Spartan Motors. Wall Street has warmed to the stock over the past three months, with analysts increasing their endorsement from hold to moderate buy.
• Revenue forecasts: On average, analysts predict $107.3 million in revenue this quarter. That would represent a decline of 15.5% from the year-ago quarter.
• Wall Street earnings expectations: The average analyst estimate is earnings of $0.04 per share. Estimates range from $0.03 to $0.05.

What our community says:
CAPS All-Stars are solidly supporting the stock, with 98.4% awarding it an outperform rating. Most of the community agrees with the All-Stars, with 94.6% granting it a rating of outperform. Fools have embraced Spartan Motors and haven't been shy with their opinions lately, logging 255 posts in the past 30 days. Spartan Motors has a bullish CAPS rating of five out of five stars that is about on par with the Fool community assessment.

Management:
Revenue has fallen for the past three quarters.

Now let's get some insight into how efficient management is at running the business. Traditionally, margins serve as an illustration of how efficiently a company captures portions of sales dollars. The company's operating margins have dropped year over year for the last three quarters. Operating margins reflect the total sales revenue retained after costs. Here is how Spartan Motors has been doing for the last four quarters:

Quarter	Q3	Q2	Q1	Q4
Gross Margin	17%	12.8%	13.6%	15.3%
Operating Margin	4.4%	(3.7%)	(1.4%)	3.6%
Net Margin	2.7%	(2.2%)	(0.9%)	2.7%

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Earnings estimates provided by Zacks.