Investors hope Gulfport Energy (Nasdaq: GPOR) will top analyst estimates once again after beating predictions by $0.05 in the previous quarter. The company will unveil its latest earnings on Thursday, Feb. 23. Gulfport Energy is an independent oil and gas exploration, development, and production company with its principal properties located in the Louisiana Gulf Coast and in West Texas in the Permian Basin.

What analysts say:

  • Buy, sell, or hold?: Analysts strongly back Gulfport Energy, with 10 out of 12 rating it a buy and the remainder rating it a hold. Analysts like Gulfport Energy better than competitor Approach Resources overall. 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 $59.6 million in revenue this quarter. That would represent a rise of 58.8% from the year-ago quarter.
  • Wall Street earnings expectations: The average analyst estimate is earnings of $0.58 per share. Estimates range from $0.48 to $0.65.

What our community says:
CAPS All-Stars are strongly supporting the stock, with 95.1% assigning it an outperform rating. The community at large backs the All-Stars, with 95.7% awarding it a rating of outperform. Despite the majority sentiment in favor of Gulfport Energy, the stock has a middling CAPS rating of three out of five stars.

Management:
Gulfport Energy's profit has risen year over year by an average of more than twofold over the past five quarters. The company raised its gross margin by 2.6 percentage points in the last quarter. Revenue rose 75% while cost of sales rose 55.8% to $12 million from a year earlier.

Now, a look at how efficient management has been at running the business. Traditionally, margins serve as an illustration of how efficiently a company captures portions of sales dollars. Gulfport Energy has seen increasing net margins year over year for the last four quarters. Net margins reflect what percentage of each dollar earned by the company becomes profit. Here is how Gulfport Energy has been doing for the last four quarters:

Quarter

Q3

Q2

Q1

Q4

Gross Margin

79.3%

79.2%

78.1%

76.1%

Operating Margin

50.1%

50.1%

47%

39.4%

Net Margin

49.9%

49.6%

45.7%

38.1%

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Earnings estimates provided by Zacks.