TreeHouse Foods Earnings Preview

After beating estimates last quarter by $0.03, TreeHouse Foods (NYSE: THS  ) has set the standard for itself. The company will unveil its latest earnings on Friday. TreeHouse Foods is a food manufacturer servicing mainly retail grocery and food service distribution channels.

What analysts say:

• Buy, sell, or hold?: Analysts think investors should stand pat on TreeHouse Foods with eight of 13 analysts rating it hold. Analysts like TreeHouse Foods better than competitor Lancaster Colony overall. Zero out of four analysts rate Lancaster Colony a buy compared to four of 13 for TreeHouse Foods. While analysts still rate the stock a hold, they are a little more optimistic about it compared to three months ago.
• Revenue forecasts: On average, analysts predict $539.3 million in revenue this quarter. That would represent a rise of 5.9% from the year-ago quarter.
• Wall Street earnings expectations: The average analyst estimate is earnings of $0.84 per share. Estimates range from $0.82 to $0.86.

What our community says:
CAPS All-Stars are solidly behind the stock, with 89.5% assigning it an outperform rating. The community at large backs the All-Stars, with 89.7% awarding it a rating of outperform. Fools are keen on TreeHouse Foods, though the message boards have been quiet lately with only 47 posts in the past 30 days. Despite the majority sentiment in favor of TreeHouse Foods, the stock has a middling CAPS rating of three out of five stars.

Management:
TreeHouse Foods' profit has risen year-over-year by an average of 9.2% over the past five quarters.

Now, a look at how efficient management has been at running the business. Margins are a representation of how efficiently a company captures portions of sales dollars. The company's operating margins decreased year-over-year in the last two quarters. Operating margins reflect the total sales revenue that the company retains after costs. Here is how TreeHouse Foods has been doing for the last four quarters:

Quarter	Q3	Q2	Q1	Q4
Gross Margin	23.8%	22.2%	24.5%	24.8%
Operating Margin	10.0%	6.8%	9.1%	11.1%
Net Margin	5.8%	2.9%	4.0%	5.5%

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Earnings estimates provided by Zacks.