Watch Kindred Healthcare's (NYSE: KND) earnings report to see if it can beat analyst expectations for the fifth consecutive quarter. The company will unveil its latest earnings on Thursday, Feb. 23. Kindred Healthcare is a health-care services company which, through its subsidiaries, operates hospitals, nursing centers, and contract rehabilitation services across the United States.

What analysts say:

  • Buy, sell, or hold?: Analysts are bullish on this stock with five analysts rating it as a buy and only one rating it as a sell. Analysts like Kindred Healthcare better than competitor Sun Healthcare Group overall. Analysts still rate the stock a moderate buy, but they are a bit more wary about it compared to three months ago.
  • Revenue forecasts: On average, analysts predict $1.57 billion in revenue this quarter. That would represent a rise of 37.7% from the year-ago quarter.
  • Wall Street earnings expectations: The average analyst estimate is earnings of $0.36 per share. Estimates range from $0.34 to $0.41.

What our community says:
CAPS All-Stars are in strong support of the stock, with 96.3% assigning it an "outperform" rating. The community at large concurs with the All-Stars, with 93.8% awarding it a rating of "outperform." Even with a robust four out of five stars, Kindred Healthcare's CAPS rating falls a little short of the community's upbeat outlook.

Management:
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. Kindred Healthcare has seen a decrease in its operating margin year over year for the last two quarters. Operating margin measures what percentage of a company's revenue remains after factoring in the cost of running the business. Here is how Kindred Healthcare has been doing for the last four quarters:

Quarter

Q3

Q2

Q1

Q4

Gross Margin

33.4%

33.3%

35.5%

34.8%

Operating Margin

(0.1%)

0.8%

3.4%

2.9%

Net Margin

0.1%

(0.4%)

1.9%

1.8%

One final thing: If you want to keep tabs on Kindred Healthcare 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.