Responding to a frequent complaint from Foolish investors, including yours Fool-y, furniture maker and Motley Fool Hidden Gems recommendation Hooker Furniture (NASDAQ:HOFT) has finally begun giving investors advance warning of its earnings releases. We've known for weeks that Hooker will report its Q4 and full-year numbers on Thursday. Two more days, and we'll know what they were.

What analysts say:

  • Buy, sell, or waffle? Two analysts follow Hooker; one has a buy rating, and one a hold.
  • Revenues. On average, they expect quarterly sales to drop 11% to $80.2 million.
  • Earnings. Profits are predicted to fall 41% to $0.20 per share.

What management says:
Hooker's put out a couple of interesting press releases in the last month, but they're less about what the company is doing and more about what it will no longer be doing. For example, Hooker will no longer offer an employee stock-options program. Closing that down is expected to cost the firm a one-time charge of $18.4 million -- or about $1.28 per share -- but also to "yield significant annual cost savings," perhaps in excess of $3.4 million per year.

Another thing Hooker won't be doing: Manufacturing wood furniture in the U.S. On the one hand, that's a plus, since closing its last U.S. wood-furniture factory will save $2.8 million to $3.5 million per year. On the other hand, it's a minus, since the restructuring and asset-impairment charges will subtract a $0.36 to $0.40 per share after taxes, with a little more than half of that coming out of this quarter's earnings.

What management does:
 You know the story here. Hooker's in bad shape, and it has been for a while. Otherwise, the firm wouldn't be shuttering factories left and right. Oh, gross margins are doing all right, rising in each of the past four quarters on a rolling basis as the firm transitions toward selling higher-margin imported furniture. But operating profitability hasn't been this bad since 2001.

Margins

5/05

8/05

11/05

2/06

5/06

8/06

Gross

27.4%

27.0%

26.9%

27.1%

27.7%

28.3%

Operating

9.3%

9.2%

7.7%

7.8%

8.0%

7.6%

Net

4.8%

4.1%

3.7%

3.8%

4.0%

4.2%
All data courtesy of Capital IQ, a division of Standard & Poor's. Data reflects trailing-12-month performance for the quarters ended in the named months.

One Fool says:
Back to the theme of "things Hooker isn't doing anymore," the company will no longer close its fiscal years in November, as it previously had. After a "two-month transition period," which ended Jan. 28, the firm will follow a January-to-January fiscal calendar. Perhaps coincidentally, most of the charges Hooker is taking will fall into this twilight-zone period.

I'm not entirely certain what that'll do to year-over-year comparisons for the firm's quarterly results going forward -- whether all of the most recent bad news can be swept into a "non-quarter" transition period and forgotten. But tuck this change into the back of your mind, and we'll watch how it's portrayed going forward.

Customers:

  • Bassett (NASDAQ:BSET)
  • Ethan Allen (NYSE:ETH)
  • Furniture Brands (NYSE:FBN)
  • La-Z-Boy (NYSE:LZB)
  • Natuzzi (NYSE:NTZ)
  • Stanley (NASDAQ:STLY)

In other Hooker news:

Hooker Furniture and Stanley Furniture are Motley Fool Hidden Gems recommendations, while La-Z-Boy is a Motley Fool Income Investor pick. Try the Foolish newsletter that best fits your investing style free for 30 days.

Fool contributor Rich Smith does not own shares of any company named above.