Watch Gibraltar Industries' (Nasdaq: ROCK) earnings report to see if it can beat analyst expectations for the third consecutive quarter. The company will unveil its latest earnings on Thursday, Feb. 23. Gibraltar Industries is a manufacturer, processor, and distributor of residential and commercial building products and processed metal products for the construction, industrial, and automotive markets.

What analysts say:

  • Buy, sell, or hold?: Analysts think investors should stand pat on Gibraltar Industries with three of four analysts rating it hold. Analysts' rating of Gibraltar Industries has stayed constant from three months prior.
  • Revenue forecasts: On average, analysts predict $180.3 million in revenue this quarter. That would represent a rise of 17.3% from the year-ago quarter.
  • Wall Street earnings expectations: The average analyst estimate is earnings of $0.03 per share. Estimates range from $0.01 to $0.04.

What our community says:
CAPS All-Stars are solidly supporting the stock, with 83.3% granting it an "outperform" rating. Most of the community concurs with the All-Stars, with 77.4% assigning it a rating of "outperform." Fools feel positively about Gibraltar Industries, though the message boards have been quiet lately with only one post in the past 30 days. Gibraltar Industries' bearish CAPS rating of two out of five stars falls short of the Fool community sentiment.

Management:
Revenue has now gone up for three straight quarters. The company boosted its gross margin by 2.3 percentage points in the last quarter. Revenue rose 20.9% while cost of sales rose 17.5% to $177.1 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. Gibraltar Industries' net margin, which reflects what percentage of revenue becomes profit, has been rising year over year for the last three quarters. Here are Gibraltar Industries' reported margins for the last four quarters:

Quarter

Q3

Q2

Q1

Q4

Gross Margin

19.5%

21.8%

18.4%

12.1%

Operating Margin

8.3%

8.3%

4.4%

(57.1%)

Net Margin

3.1%

3.7%

5.1%

(48.5%)

One final thing: If you want to keep tabs on Gibraltar Industries movements, and for more analysis on the company, make sure you add it to your Watchlist.

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Earnings estimates provided by Zacks.