Investors braced for a bumpy ride ahead of Diebold's (NYSE: DBD) 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 Wednesday. Diebold develops, manufactures, sells and services self-service transaction systems, electronic and physical security systems, software, and various products used to equip bank facilities and voting equipment.
What analysts say
- Buy, sell, or hold?: Analysts think investors should stand pat on Diebold with five of seven analysts rating it hold. Analysts don't like Diebold as much as competitor Brink's overall. Two out of three analysts rate Brink's a buy compared to one of seven for Diebold. Analysts haven't adjusted their rating of Diebold for the past three months.
- Revenue forecasts: On average, analysts predict $655.9 million in revenue this quarter. That would represent a decline of 1.4% from the year-ago quarter.
- Wall Street earnings expectations: The average analyst estimate is earnings of $0.31 per share. Estimates range from $0.27 to $0.35.
What our community says
CAPS All-Stars are solidly backing the stock with 92.3% granting it an outperform rating. The community at large agrees with the All-Stars with 81.3% assigning it a rating of outperform. Fools are bullish on Diebold, though the message boards have been quiet lately with only 71 posts in the past 30 days. Despite the majority sentiment in favor of Diebold, the stock has a middling CAPS rating of three out of five stars.
Management
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 | Q1 | Q4 | Q3 | Q2 |
| Gross Margin | 24.3% | 24% | 25.9% | 26.8% |
| Operating Margin | 1.4% | (17.9%) | 7.0% | 7.0% |
| Net Margin | 0.4% | (15.2%) | 6.2% | 4.5% |
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