Watch Coinstar's (Nasdaq: CSTR) earnings report to see if it can beat analyst expectations for the fifth consecutive quarter. The company will unveil its latest earnings on Thursday, July 28. Coinstar is a multi-national company, which offers a range of solutions for retailers' storefronts including self-service coin counting, entertainment services, self-service DVD kiosks, money transfer services, and electronic payment services.

What analysts say:

  • Buy, sell, or hold?: Analysts are bullish on this stock with nine analysts rating it as a buy and only one rating it as a sell. Analysts don't like Coinstar as much as competitor NCR overall. That rating hasn't budged in three months as analysts have remained steadfast in their opinion of the stock.
  • Revenue Forecasts: On average, analysts predict $445.9 million in revenue this quarter. That would represent a rise of 30.3% from the year-ago quarter.
  • Wall Street Earnings Expectations: The average analyst estimate is earnings of $0.94 per share. Estimates range from $0.79 to $0.99.

What our community says:
CAPS All-Stars are solidly backing the stock with 85.9% assigning it an "outperform" rating. The community at large backs the All-Stars with 85.8% giving it a rating of "outperform." Fools are bullish on Coinstar and haven't been shy with their opinions lately, logging 309 posts in the past 30 days. Coinstar's bearish CAPS rating of two out of five stars falls short of the Fool community sentiment.

Management:
Coinstar's profit has risen year over year by an average of 79.8%. Revenue has now gone up for three straight quarters. The company's gross margin shrank by 4.3 percentage points in the last quarter. Revenue rose 21.1% while cost of sales rose 28.6% to $315.1 million from a year earlier.

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

25.7%

28.7%

32.8%

29.4%

Operating Margin

7.4%

11%

12.1%

8.6%

Net Margin

2%

3%

5.1%

3.9%

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