Liquidity Services (Nasdaq: LQDT) will try to beat its earnings estimates for the fifth consecutive quarter. The company will unveil its latest earnings Tuesday. The Company is an online auction marketplace for wholesale surplus and salvage assets. It enables buyers and sellers to transact in an efficient, automated online auction environment offering more than 500 product categories.

What analysts say:

  • Buy, sell, or hold?: Analysts are very bullish on this stock, unanimously backing it as a buy. Analysts like Liquidity Services better than competitor Overstock.com overall. Zero out of two analysts rate Overstock.com a buy compared to seven of seven for Liquidity Services. Analysts still rate the stock a moderate buy, but they are a bit more wary about it compared with three months ago.
  • Revenue forecasts: On average, analysts predict $82.3 million in revenue this quarter. That would represent a rise of 13.1% from the year-ago quarter.
  • Wall Street earnings expectations: The average analyst estimate is earnings of $0.17 per share. Estimates range from $0.15 to $0.19.

What our community says:
CAPS All-Stars are solidly behind the stock with 99.1% granting it an "outperform" rating. The community at large concurs with the All-Stars with 94.7% giving it a rating of "outperform." Fools are bullish on Liquidity Services, though the message boards have been quiet lately with only 93 posts in the past 30 days. Liquidity Services has a bullish CAPS rating of five out of five stars that is about on par with the Fool community assessment.

Management:
Liquidity Services' profit has risen year over year by an average of 66.7%.

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

55.8%

58.0%

61%

58.2%

Operating Margin

11.0%

3.5%

6.9%

9.6%

Net Margin

5.5%

1.8%

3.4%

4.1%

For all our Liquidity Services-specific analysis, including earnings and beyond, add Liquidity Services to My Watchlist.

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