Immucor Earnings Preview

After beating estimates last quarter by 5 cents, Immucor (Nasdaq: BLUD) has set the standard for itself. The company will unveil its latest earnings on Monday. Immucor develops, manufactures, and sells a complete line of reagents and automated systems that detect and identify certain properties of the cell and serum components of human blood for the purpose of blood transfusion.

What analysts say:

• Buy, sell, or hold? Analysts think investors should stand pat on Immucor with six of eight analysts rating it hold. Analysts don't like Immucor as much as competitor Haemonetics overall. Six out of 11 analysts rate Haemonetics a buy compared with two of eight for Immucor. While analysts still rate the stock a hold, they are a little more optimistic about it compared with three months ago.
• Revenue forecasts: On average, analysts predict $81.3 million in revenue this quarter. That would represent a decline of 2% from the year-ago quarter.
• Wall Street earnings expectations: The average analyst estimate is earnings of 27 cents per share. Estimates range from 26 cents to 29 cents.

What our community says:
CAPS All Stars are solidly backing the stock with 97.5% awarding it an "outperform" rating. The community at large backs the All Stars with 96.4% granting it a rating of "outperform." Fools are gung-ho about Immucor and haven't been shy with their opinions lately, logging 213 posts in the past 30 days. Even with a robust four out of five stars, Immucor's CAPS rating falls a little short of the community's upbeat outlook.

Management:
Immucor's profit has risen year over year by an average of 7.7%. Over the last four quarters, revenue has increased 2% on average year over year.

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.

One final thing: If you want to keep tabs on Immucor movements, and for more analysis on the company, make sure you add it to your Watchlist.

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