Investors braced for a bumpy ride ahead of WD-40 Company's (Nasdaq: WDFC) earnings announcement as the company has wavered between beating and falling short of analyst predictions during the past fiscal year. The company will unveil its latest earnings on Thursday, July 7. WD-40 provides easy-to-use solutions for a wide variety of maintenance needs of "doer" and "on-the-job" users by leveraging and building the brand fortress of the company.

What analysts say:

  • Buy, sell, or hold?: Analysts think investors should stand pat on WD-40 with analysts unanimously rating it hold. Analysts don't like WD-40 as much as competitor Stepan Company overall. WD-40's rating hasn't changed over the past three months.
  • Revenue Forecasts: On average, analysts predict $87.5 million in revenue this quarter. That would represent a rise of 6% from the year-ago quarter.
  • Wall Street Earnings Expectations: The average analyst estimate is earnings of 52 cents per share. Estimates range from $0.50 to $0.53.

What our community says:
CAPS All-Stars are solidly behind the stock with 94.9% assigning it an "outperform" rating. The community at large backs the All-Stars with 92.3% granting it a rating of "outperform." Fools are bullish on WD-40, though the message boards have been quiet lately with only 67 posts in the past 30 days. WD-40 has a bullish CAPS rating of five out of five stars that is about on par with the Fool community assessment.

Management:
WD-40's profit has risen year over year by an average of 1.1%. A year-over-year revenue decrease last quarter snaps a streak of three consecutive quarters of revenue increases.

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. The following table shows gross, operating, and net margins over the past four quarters.

Quarter

Q2

Q1

Q4

Q3

Gross Margin

51.8%

50.9%

50.7%

51.2%

Operating Margin

17.5%

16.5%

13.4%

15.8%

Net Margin

11.5%

11.2%

8.5%

11%

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