Investors braced for a bumpy ride ahead of MarineMax's (NYSE: HZO) 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 tomorrow. MarineMax is a recreational boat dealer in the United States.

What analysts say

  • Buy, sell, or hold?: Analysts generally think investors should hang on to MarineMax, with half rating the stock a hold. Analysts don't like MarineMax as much as competitor West Marine overall. One out of one analysts rate West Marine a buy compared to two of four for MarineMax. Analysts' rating of MarineMax has stayed constant from three months prior.
  • Revenue forecasts: On average, analysts predict $132.4 million in revenue this quarter. That would represent a rise of 14.8% from the year-ago quarter.
  • Wall Street earnings expectations: The average analyst estimate is earnings of $0.17 per share. Estimates range from $0.09 to $0.21.

What our community says
The majority of CAPS All-Stars see HZO as a good bet, with 60% awarding it an outperform rating. The community is divided on the stock with 54.3% Fools assigning it an outperform rating and 45.7% an underperform rating. Fools are gung-ho about MarineMax, though the message boards have been quiet lately with only 51 posts in the past 30 days. MarineMax's bearish CAPS rating of two out of five stars falls short of the Fool community sentiment.

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

Q2

Q1

Q4

Q3

Gross Margin

23.1%

25.6%

24.2%

29.9%

Operating Margin

(3.2%)

(4.2%)

(1.0%)

1.1%

Net Margin

(3.9%)

(5.1%)

(1.5%)

0.4%

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