Watch UniFirst's (NYSE: UNF) earnings report to see if it can beat analyst expectations for the third consecutive quarter. The company will unveil its latest earnings on Wednesday, March 28. UniFirst designs, manufactures, personalizes, rents, cleans, delivers, and sells a wide range of uniforms and protective clothing.

What analysts say:

  • Buy, sell, or hold?: Analysts think investors should stand pat on UniFirst, with five out of seven analysts rating it a hold. Analysts don't like UniFirst as much as competitor G&K Services overall. Three out of eight analysts rate G&K Services a buy compared to two out of seven for UniFirst. Analysts haven't adjusted their rating of UniFirst for the past three months.
  • Revenue forecasts: On average, analysts predict $303.9 million in revenue this quarter. That would represent a rise of 9.1% from the year-ago quarter.
  • Wall Street earnings expectations: The average analyst estimate is earnings of $0.89 per share. Estimates range from $0.82 to $0.92.

What our community says:
CAPS All-Stars are strongly backing the stock, with 92.9% giving it an outperform rating. Most of the community backs the All-Stars, with 89.2% awarding it a rating of outperform. Though still bullish, the CAPS rating of four out of five stars for UniFirst is a bit more pessimistic than the community assessment.

Management:
UniFirst's profit has risen year over year by an average of 2.1% over the past five quarters. Revenue has now gone up for three straight quarters. The company's gross margin shrank by 2.6 percentage points in the last quarter. Revenue rose 14.6% while cost of sales rose 19.5% to $195.1 million from a year earlier.

Now let's look at how efficient management is at running the business. Traditionally, margins represent the efficiency with which companies capture portions of sales dollars. UniFirst'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 UniFirst has been doing for the last four quarters:

Quarter

Q1

Q4

Q3

Q2

Gross Margin

37.7%

35.5%

36.5%

36.7%

Operating Margin

13.5%

9.6%

10.0%

9.9%

Net Margin

8.2%

6.2%

6.3%

5.8%

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Earnings estimates provided by Zacks.