While Texas Industries (NYSE: TXI) missed estimates last quarter, investors hope that it will bounce back and outpace Wall Street expectations this quarter. The company will unveil its latest earnings on Thursday. Texas Industries is a supplier of heavy construction materials in the United States through its three business segments: cement, aggregates, and consumer products.

What analysts say:

  • Buy, sell, or hold?: Analysts think investors should stand pat on Texas Industries with eight of 10 analysts rating it hold. Analysts like Texas Industries better than competitor USG overall. Zero out of 13 analysts rate USG a buy compared to one of 10 for Texas Industries.
  • Revenue forecasts: On average, analysts predict $179.7 million in revenue this quarter. That would represent a rise of 4.4% from the year-ago quarter.
  • Wall Street earnings expectations: The average analyst estimate is a loss of $0.26 per share. Estimates range from a loss of $0.44 to a loss of $0.02.

What our community says:
CAPS All Stars are solidly backing the stock with 87.2% awarding it an outperform rating. The community at large agrees with the All Stars with 81.1% granting it a rating of outperform. Fools are gung-ho about Texas Industries, though the message boards have been quiet lately with only 55 posts in the past 30 days. Texas Industries' bearish CAPS rating of one out of five stars falls short of the Fool community sentiment.

Management:
The company's gross margin shrank by 8.4 percentage points in the last quarter. Revenue fell 0.3% while cost of sales rose 9.2% to $169.3 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

Q4

Q3

Q2

Q1

Gross Margin

3.7%

(7.4%)

8.1%

9.4%

Operating Margin

(10.2%)

(21.2%)

(4.4%)

0%

Net Margin

(5.2%)

(16.6%)

(7.6%)

(13.8%)

One final thing: If you want to keep tabs on Texas Industries movements, and for more analysis on the company, make sure you add it to your watchlist.

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