Investors braced for a bumpy ride ahead of Gulf Island Fabrication's (Nasdaq: GIFI) earnings announcement as the company has wavered between beating and falling short of analyst predictions during the past fiscal year. The company will unveil its latest earnings on Monday, Feb. 20. Gulf Island Fabrication is a fabricator of offshore drilling and production platforms and other specialized structures used in the development and production of offshore oil and gas reserves.

What analysts say:

  • Buy, sell, or hold?: Analysts strongly back Gulf Island Fabrication, with three out of five rating it a buy and the remainder rating it a hold. 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 $97 million in revenue this quarter. That would represent a rise of 125.7% from the year-ago quarter.
  • Wall Street earnings expectations: The average analyst estimate is earnings of $0.22 per share. Estimates range from $0.20 to $0.24.

What our community says:
CAPS All-Stars are enthusiastically backing the stock, with 98.1% granting it an outperform rating. The greater community is in line with the All-Stars, as 95.5% give it a rating of outperform. Fools feel positively about Gulf Island Fabrication and haven't been shy with their opinions lately, logging 106 posts in the past 30 days. Even with a robust four out of five stars, Gulf Island Fabrication's CAPS rating falls a little short of the community's upbeat outlook.

Management:
The company's revenue has now risen for two straight quarters. The company's gross margin shrank by 6.8 percentage points in the last quarter. Revenue rose 41.3% while cost of sales rose 52.1% to $81.8 million from a year earlier.

Now let's get some insight into how efficient management is at running the business. Margins illustrate how efficiently a company captures portions of sales dollars. Gulf Island Fabrication's operating margins have been decreasing year over year for the last four quarters. Operating margins reflect the total sales revenue that the company retains after costs. Here are Gulf Island Fabrication's reported margins for the last four quarters:

Quarter

Q3

Q2

Q1

Q4

Gross Margin

4.7%

5.6%

(20.6%)

5.0%

Operating Margin

2.4%

3.3%

(24.8%)

0.7%

Net Margin

1.8%

2.1%

(15.0%)

3.9%

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Earnings estimates provided by Zacks.