Investors braced for a bumpy ride ahead of Hancock Holding's (Nasdaq: HBHC) 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. Hancock Holding is a financial holding company that operates through wholly owned subsidiaries.

What analysts say

  • Buy, sell, or hold?: Analysts generally think investors should hang on to Hancock Holding, with half rating the stock a hold. Analysts like Hancock Holding better than competitor Trustmark overall. Four out of 10 analysts rate Trustmark a buy compared to seven of 14 for Hancock Holding. Analysts still rate the stock a hold, but they are a bit more wary about it compared to three months ago.
  • Revenue forecasts: On average, analysts predict $155.9 million in revenue this quarter. That would represent a rise of 46.8% from the year-ago quarter.
  • Wall Street earnings expectations: The average analyst estimate is earnings of $0.40 per share. Estimates range from $0.29 to $0.56.

What our community says:
CAPS All-Stars are split on HBHC, with 52% rating it an outperform and 48% giving it an underperform rating. Fools have embraced Hancock Holding, though the message boards have been quiet lately with only 14 posts in the past 30 days. Hancock Holding's bearish CAPS rating of one out of five stars falls short of the Fool community sentiment.

Management:
Hancock Holding's income has fallen year over year by an average of 22.7%. Revenue has fallen in the past two quarters.

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 net margins over the past four quarters.

Quarter

Q1

Q4

Q3

Q2

Net Margin

13.1%

14.2%

12.3%

5.2%

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