Investors braced for a bumpy ride ahead of Woodward's (Nasdaq: WWD) 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 Monday. Woodward designs, manufactures, and services energy control systems and components for aircraft and industrial engines and turbines.

What analysts say:

  • Buy, sell, or hold?: Analysts strongly back Woodward, with seven of nine rating it a buy and the remainder rating it a hold. Analysts don't like Woodward as much as competitor Capstone Turbine overall. Wall Street has warmed to the stock over the past three months, with analysts increasing their endorsement from hold to moderate buy.
  • Revenue forecasts: On average, analysts predict $420.9 million in revenue this quarter. That would represent a rise of 18.1% from the year-ago quarter.
  • Wall Street earnings expectations: The average analyst estimate is earnings of $0.50 per share. Estimates range from $0.47 to $0.54.

What our community says
CAPS All-Stars are solidly backing the stock with 99.4% assigning it an outperform rating. The community at large concurs with the All-Stars with 97.9% awarding it a rating of outperform. Fools have embraced Woodward and haven't been shy with their opinions lately, logging 138 posts in the past 30 days. Woodward has a bullish CAPS rating of five out of five stars that is about on par with the Fool community assessment.

Management
Woodward's profit has risen year over year by an average of 24.4%. Revenue has now gone up for three straight 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 gross, operating, and net margins over the past four quarters.

Quarter

Q2

Q1

Q4

Q3

Gross Margin

30.2%

28.5%

30.2%

29.9%

Operating Margin

11.1%

8.9%

18.6%

10.7%

Net Margin

7.7%

6.1%

7.9%

8.9%

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