First Midwest Bancorp Earnings Preview

Investors are brazing for a bumpy ride ahead of First Midwest Bancorp's (Nasdaq: FMBI) 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 Monday, Oct. 17. First Midwest Bancorp is engaged in commercial and retail banking and offers financial products and services to individual, business, institutional, and governmental customers.

What analysts say:

• Buy, sell, or hold?: Analysts think investors should stand pat on First Midwest Bancorp with five of nine analysts rating it a hold. Analysts like First Midwest Bancorp better than competitor PrivateBancorp overall. Four out of 14 analysts rate PrivateBancorp a buy compared to four of nine for First Midwest Bancorp. Analysts still rate the stock a hold, but they are a bit more wary about it compared to three months ago.
• Revenue forecasts: On average, analysts predict $99.9 million in revenue this quarter. That would represent a decline of 1.1% from the year-ago quarter.
• Wall Street earnings expectations: The average analyst estimate is earnings of $0.12 cents per share. Estimates range from $0.10 to $0.15.

What our community says:
The majority of CAPS All-Stars see FMBI as a good bet, with 62.1% assigning it an "outperform" rating. The majority of the Fools are in agreement with the All-Stars, as 67.6% give it an "outperform" rating. Fools are bullish on First Midwest Bancorp, though the message boards have been quiet lately with only 44 posts in the past 30 days. First Midwest Bancorp's bearish CAPS rating of one out of five stars falls short of the Fool community sentiment.

Management:
Revenue has fallen for the past three quarters.

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 net margins over the past four quarters.

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