Watch Neenah Paper's (NYSE: NP) earnings report to see if it can beat analyst expectations for the fifth consecutive quarter. The company will unveil its latest earnings on Monday, Feb. 20. Neenah Paper is an international producer of papers and technical products.

What analysts say:

  • Buy, sell, or hold?: Half of analysts think investors should stand pat on Neenah Paper while the remaining half rate the stock as a buy. Analysts like Neenah Paper better than competitor Wausau Paper overall. One out of four analysts rate Wausau Paper a buy compared to one out of two for Neenah Paper.
  • Revenue forecasts: On average, analysts predict $187 million in revenue this quarter. That would represent a rise of 16.7% from the year-ago quarter.
  • Wall Street earnings expectations: The average analyst estimate is earnings of $0.44 per share. Estimates range from $0.40 to $0.47.

What our community says:
CAPS All-Stars are strongly supporting the stock, with 95.6% granting it an outperform rating. The community at large is in line with the All-Stars, with 87.9% giving it a rating of outperform. Fools are gung-ho about Neenah Paper, though the message boards have been quiet lately, with only 58 posts in the past 30 days. Despite the majority sentiment in favor of Neenah Paper, the stock has a middling CAPS rating of three out of five stars.

Management:
Neenah Paper's profit has risen year-over-year by an average of 7.7% over the past five quarters. Revenue has now gone up for three straight quarters.

Now let's look at how efficient management is at running the business. Margins are a representation of how efficiently a company captures portions of sales dollars. Neenah Paper's gross margins, which reflect the total sales revenue retained after costs, have been dropping year-over-year for the last four quarters. Here is how Neenah Paper has been doing for the last four quarters:

Quarter

Q3

Q2

Q1

Q4

Gross Margin

15.7%

18.3%

19.2%

17.3%

Operating Margin

7.1%

8.6%

8.6%

8.3%

Net Margin

3.8%

4.3%

4.0%

4.2%

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Earnings estimates provided by Zacks.