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Foolish Forecast: Under Armour Undresses

By Rich Smith – Updated Nov 15, 2016 at 6:00PM

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Views you can use to get clues on tomorrow's news.

Welcome to the U.S. equity markets, Under Armour (NASDAQ:UARM). Now that your IPO is out of the way, it's time to put you to work. Your first quarterly earnings release is due tomorrow before market-open. Don't be late.

Wall Street Wisdom:

  • General consensus. Not yet public three months, this sportswear apparelier has already attracted a half-dozen analysts to its books. Strangely, none of them have much of an opinion on the company: unanimous hold ratings.
  • Revenues. Analysts are looking for 21% quarterly sales growth tomorrow, in comparison with last year. The consensus target is $78.9 million.
  • Earnings. Profits are expected to drop year over year, down sharply from $0.18 to $0.07.

Margin watch:
Because of its recent entry onto the market, data providers haven't had a chance to fully crunch its historical numbers. Capital IQ does, however, give us a picture of the company's margin performance for the past year. Here's how it looks:

Margins %

12/04

3/05

6/05

9/05

Gross

46.5

46.8

47.1

48.3

Op.

12.4

12.1

11.8

12.4

Net

8

7.5

7.1

7.2

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

Get to know 'em:
Under Armour's short history doesn't tell us much more than that gross margins are strengthening -- a strength that hasn't yet dropped to the bottom line. Under Armour's seasonality may be a more helpful insight into its operations:

6/04

9/04

12/04

3/05

6/05

9/05

Revenues

35.1

65.4

69.6

53.6

53.6

86.6

Net profits

1.7

6.8

6.2

2.2

2.2

8.4

All data courtesy of Capital IQ, a division of Standard & Poor's. Quarterly numbers are in millions of dollars.

Although it's growing strongly, the company clearly has a seasonal business, with strong sales and profits in the September and December quarters and weaker numbers in March and June. Tomorrow's news will report on the December 2005 results, so it's a safe bet that they'll look very good (once you net out the exceptional costs related to the IPO.)

Fool contributor Rich Smith does not own shares of Under Armour.

None

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