For-profit educator DeVry (NYSE:DV) reports fiscal Q2 2007 earnings results Thursday afternoon. Want to know what Wall Street expects to see? Read on. Want to know what really matters? Read on a bit more.

What analysts say:

  • Buy, sell, or waffle? Nineteen analysts now follow DeVry, up two from last quarter. Four of them rate the stock a buy, 14 more a hold, and one a sell.
  • Revenues. On average, the analysts expect to see 11% sales growth, to $233.1 million.
  • Earnings. Profits, however, are predicted to skyrocket 53%, to $0.23 per share.

What management says:
The big news at DeVry this quarter was the change at the top. On Nov. 15, former COO Daniel Hamburger took over the CEO's chair from Ronald L. Taylor. And no sooner had he taken his seat than Hamburger began to shake up the joint. That same day, DeVry initiated its first dividend payment, declaring an intention to pay out $0.05 per share twice a year, which at the stock's current price equates to a dividend yield of 0.35%. Not much, granted. But as they say: It's a start. Over the course of your average year, that means that DeVry will be paying out about $7.1 million in dividends -- easily affordable to this firm, with $83 million in net cash on its balance sheet. And it will get more affordable still as the firm shells out another $35 million of its cash on Hamburger's other shareholder helper: stock buybacks. The firm aims to deploy that cash over the course of the next two years, which should suffice to reduce the (dividend-receiving) share count by about 1.7%.

What management does:
Profitability continues to improve at DeVry, with rolling gross and net margins still moving steadily upward, as they have for the last 18 months. Rolling operating margins, too, have been on the rise, with the exception of one small hiccup in the March 2006 quarter.

Margins %

6/05

9/05

12/05

3/06

6/06

9/06

Gross

45.1

45.5

46.0

46.2

46.3

46.7

Op.

6.8

7.7

8.2

8.0

8.1

8.4

Net

2.3

2.6

3.3

3.8

5.1

6.9
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:
With its shares now up 52% in as many weeks, now seems a great time for DeVry to begin returning cash to its shareholders. The firm's turnaround, doubted for so long, seems to be in full swing. Cash generation is strong at $98 million in trailing-12-month free cash flow, and analysts predict continued healthy profits growth of 20% per annum. What's more, the firm looks fairly priced at an enterprise value-to-free cash flow ratio of just under 20. Even if DeVry won't be getting any great bargain on its share buybacks, at least it doesn't seem to be overpaying, either.

Competitors:

  • Apollo Group (NASDAQ:APOL)
  • Career Education (NASDAQ:CECO)
  • Corinthian Colleges (NASDAQ:COCO)
  • ITT Educational (NYSE:ESI)
  • Laureate Education (NASDAQ:LAUR)
  • Strayer (NASDAQ:STRA)

Extra credit reading available at:

Got an opinion on DeVry or its competitors? Bring it to CAPS!

Fool contributor Rich Smith does not own shares of any company named above. The Fool's disclosure policy has been known to wear pajama pants to its morning classes.